As youngsters you hold on to everything Mummy tells you, after all she’s been around since…forever and you were the new kid on the block who could hardly tell the difference between water and sprite, except one made you happy and the other made you sad. Despite the fact that Mother was the one with all the experience and you were the innocent naive cute (not in all cases) kid it has now come to our attention that mummy told an awful lot of porkie pies mixed up with her pearls of wisdom.

This shouldn’t come as a suprise as mother once had me believing that if I lose a tooth, midgets with wings would fly through my window, go under my pillow (without waking me up of course) and leave me a small fortune probably consisting of one gold coin and a few brown ones to ease my pain; although the next day I would only go and buy more sweets to aid the destruction of the other teeth. I was also deluded enough to subscribe to the notion that a fat man with a big beard and belly would give me gifts once a year for being a good boy and never became suspicious that I was told this only when it was bedtime and I was trying to watch big people on TV as my heavy diet of Blue Peter and Art Attack were no longer stimulating.

These white lies were harmless and had very little effect on my growing life as a child, apart from when it was beating time and I would ask for a slap in the mouth and hope to knock out a tooth so at least a brother could get paid to ease the pain of the slipper. However there were some other lies I was told as I got older which may have had bigger effects and led to a brother being caught by surprise in adulthood.

1. “Good guys win the prize” One of the biggest lies of all time is that good guys are the winners….I totally disagree. Malcom X, Martin Luther King, JFK and Jesus were good guys but what happened to them? They were assassinated by the bad guys and everyone just continued acting up after they were dead. This is a miscarriage of the same justice good guys live for but guess what? justice don’t have a good record of loving them back.

Good guys get sad sounds like “awwww” you hear it when the nerd loses out on the girl to the bully in the movies or you see a cute dog on holiday that looks like it hasn’t eaten in months or when sparing a thought for Heskey after reading our flagship article. On the flipside, you know what sound winners get? they get happy excited sounds “oohs” and “ahs” and an occasional loud exclamation of yes!!! like James Bond after he has killed 85 people in an hour and a half, saved the girl and then did a backflip “what a hero “. Charlie Sheen is winning, Manchester United are winning good guys who try to do things the right way are most definitely losing ask Arsene Wenger he will tell you what happened to him which leads on to number 2 he got shitted on by the guy with the cash money.

2. “Son, money isn’t everything”. It sounds incredibly shallow to claim that this is a lie as money is far from being the most important thing in life so I’ll refer to it as a half truth used out of context to make me feel better about myself. When striving towards having a home for you and your potential family to live in and eventually retiring from this rat race so one can do more constructive things with your time like seeking higher spirituality and watching re runs of Come Dine With Me, money becomes the focus of everything.

If we lived in a different kind of society in which equality existed, money would lose importance; however we don’t, we live in a society of hustlers and their assistants and guys are buying stuff that should be free and selling it to us for profit. If you don’t have money you will be drinking government juice and surviving off tuna and bread. Money isn’t everything? hmmm if you watch the video you will realise you might be living in a land very far away from the utopia you have created in your head.

3. “Go to school and you will earn a good living” This is possibly one of the most harmful lies you can tell a child. When trying to explain the importance of education precautions need to be taken as a result to avoid confusion so I have devised a new statement for any mothers who are reading.

“Go to secondary school, then College, then go to university for 4 years and do a degree, return for a year and do a masters after which you can spend two years acquiring a doctorate. At the end of this process you might possibly become a very smart individual; however you are not guaranteed anything and will possibly only earn as much as Bobby in your class who dropped out at 14 and has been a painter and decorator ever since. So don’t be angry with him, study gain intelligence and use this to make good choices, there are no guarantees in life”

This would be a much more adequate replacement for what you told me in ’98…

“It is by force you will go to school and you will be a doctor or lawyer; my friend what is football? you can’t buy house with football”

4. “Always tell the truth son” Let’s totally ignore the fact that despite attempting to convince me that a man named Santa Claus existed; lying was equal to stealing and were the big no no’s in my house that you could easily receive a roundhouse kick for participating in. However as an adult I have realised always being honest has its downsides. Some people love me for the fact that im the one in my group who usually speaks without thinking; constantly splurting out statements of randomness. This makes lying extremely difficult for me as this requires too much thought and I would only snitch on myself in the end anyway.

I’ve witnessed first hand the cons of honesty; people do not like the truth well not in a brutally honest form. People like pretty words and stories of hope and winning! My mum should have told me. If they ask “why did you did it?”  “where were you? tell the truth” and “what were you doing there?” remix your answer a little bit, avoid confrontation. Oh how many a man that routine could have saved if their mother didn’t instill this whole honesty thing (kidding).

5. Al Pacino’s name is really Tony Montana, Denzel Washington is my real father and all women can cook.

I refuse to elaborate on what are clearly blatant lies.

Despite this my mother is still the best person I know, the one I ask for advice and the one that still lies to me when she tells me I’m the most handsome boy in London. Some things never change..

Don Kwelu

Readers do you agree? What lies has your mother told you? What home truths have you discovered over the last few years? Holla at me!