Reasonable Doubt
Who Gets to Decide What’s True in Family Lore?
I don’t believe my son about his Xbox Live suspension. He doesn’t believe me about his early years.
“Please don’t talk about this in some interview,” my 11-year-old pleaded with me.
We were wrapping up a long text message exchange about his online behavior. And I’d bet, if you asked him, it felt more like a lecture than a discussion.
Earlier in the day, I found a “notice of Xbox Live enforcement action” in my email inbox. My son’s communication privileges had been suspended for 28 hours because another player reported “abusive or offensive language.” The notice provided very few facts for me to consider, so I immediately sent a message to him at his mom’s house (we share custody) asking for his side of the story. Not surprisingly, his explanation downplayed any actual wrongdoing: it was another player’s fault that he got “kicked from the party.”
The whole story reminded me of those slightly-edited versions of the truth that I always submitted to the grown-ups during parent-teacher conferences. Somewhere, deep in my psyche, my inner tweenager was embarrassed to realize that I had been mistaken each time I thought I fooled my parents with a blatant omission of facts.
