The Day My Mommy Lied To Me

Anybody who knows me knows I hate liver (and yes, I can see my mom rolling her eyes already in memory of the horrible wretched day she got caught lying).

But I would like to emphasize my hatred of liver by saying I detest it so much that if it were the last food on Earth and I HAD to eat it, I would cut it up into tiny pea-sized bullets and shoot them down my throat with squirt guns filled with enough water to prevent the gag reflex from expelling the "nutritious" (gag gag) most awful tasting meat on the planet. And it's not even meat – it's an organ! (oh gag again)

So now that you have the backdrop for the BIG LIE, let me emphasize once more my HATRED of liver. Got it? Good. Because this is what happened on the day I saw what looked like liver in a pan on the stove in our kitchen – LIVER!

"It's NOT liver," my mom lied.

"I know what liver looks like. And THAT is liver. It even smells like liver."

"Well, it's not. It's a new meat called revil."

"There is no such thing as revil," I told her.

"Well, obviously, there is, because we're eating it," she told me.

Hmm. As the smell of the organ filled the house, I squinted my eyes, tapped my finger to my chin, and pondered the situation. I was raised Catholic by a Catholic mom. Therefore, what my mom was telling me must be true, because good Catholics never lie. And good moms never lie to their children. So I will try this "revil" that I don't believe is really revil, because I am a good daughter.

When it was time for dinner, my two sisters and I sat down at the table gawking at the inside of some poor dead animal sprawled out on our plates. We looked first at each other, and then at our mother, wondering if we should trust her.

"Taste it," she commanded.

I placed the tip of my tongue on the foul substance as I looked at my mother in horror. "It tastes like liver," I said, seething. And then realization grasped me by the throat. "(Gasp!) It is liver. You LIED to us!"

My sisters and I were so shocked, our swallowing reflexes locked up. But we were even more shocked when she revealed to us that revil was liver spelled backwards. "So really," mom said, "it wasn't a lie."

Knowing how much my mother disdains certain foods, one day soon I'm going to invite her over for some "new" foods – tunaep rettub sandwiches with a side order of saep and a dessert of tunococ pie.

(I love you, Mom)