Um… Probably
At some point in my childhood my grandparents came to visit and my parents left for a weekend to themselves. I was probably 8 years old or so at the time of this event. There was a small fair going on at my school that weekend, so we went to play games, win prizes, wander and kill time.
I won a whole bunch of vouchers and so we went to go pick out prizes at the end and I picked a beautiful red squishy sticky ball — You know the kind. They make little snacks and hands and frogs out of it now, gelatinous toys of wonder. I was excited to get it out of the bag it was in, and on our way back to the car, I reached my little hand into the bag and started to pull it out when my Grandmother freaked out.
She told me that it was poisonous.
I know now that she probably didn’t want me to get it out and rub it on myself, try to swallow it, or mash it into car upholstery. At the time however, this was traumatic. I had just played (incredibly difficult) games for (what seemed like) hours and my carefully selected prize had been deemed poisonous.
Now… knowing the emotional consequences of such a fib (even though, to this day, I’m not entirely sure whether or not my Grandmother really thought it was poisonous or not) I almost certainly will not lie to such a degree to my children. However… would I stretch the the truth to prevent a permanent altar of Silly Putty from being erected on the seat of a car?
