he got me.

Joaquin is a fantastic story teller.

But like most moms, I can usually tell when he's making something up by decoding his microexpressions and body language like Cal Lightman.

But the other night, he got me good.

As I tucked him into bed, we were having a serious conversation about him being scared, then about Osama Bin Laden and why he became a bad guy. I was thankful to turn the conversation towards God and even have Joaquin repeat a prayer after me to help him not be so afraid.

After that, he brought up school and the infrequent lock down drills they practice in case of a bad guy entering the school. He said his teacher had them draw and color a cutout of themselves and when there's a lockdown, they put up this cutout in their seats and go hide in the designated spot in the classroom...so it looks like all the kids are still in their seats.

He said it even has this shiny stuff on it...I said, "Laminated?" and he said, "Yeah, the teacher laminated them."

I asked, "Well, how does it sit up in your seat?"

He replied,"It has these little plastic feet like game board pieces and it stands up. It looks like we're reading books at our desks."

So I thought to myself, 'That is really weird and a little scary for the kids to have to go through all that. I'm going to ask his teacher the next time I see her why they do that."

I dropped the topic and he drifted off to sleep.

But when Juan Pablo came home that night, I told him the story.

He immediately said, "He made that up."

I said, "How do you know?"

And he said, "There's no way, under the stress of an intruder in the building, they would have the kids setting up these fake people." And then, the lightbulb flashed, and the whole story just seemed so ridiculous to me.

So you KNOW I asked Joaquin about it in the morning. With my usual statement of, "I'm going to email your teacher about this." And he copped. He'd made the whole thing up.

I asked him, "WHY would you do that?"

His answer..."Because it was fun."

I am NOT liking the implications of this, nor the fact that I fell for such an outrageous story.