Neighborhood drama

[conuly]

Eva is friends with N. N is friends with J. Eva doesn't particularly like J, but she tries to get along with her most of the time. (Some of the time they mutually ostracize each other.)

J's mother tends to overprotect her relative to the rest of the neighborhood. N's mother follows the more usual neighborhood tradition of letting her children roam completely unsupervised.

So, yesterday Eva asked if she could go to the pool. I said she shouldn't, but I guessed she could if she got back in time for her dentist appointment. (Spoiler, she didn't get back in time.) Later, as I'm walking around, J's mother stops me. "You don't look like you just got back from the pool!"

Apparently, J had told her I went there and supervised, because J isn't allowed to go to the pool without an adult. And J's mom thought this was a bit unlikely - she's known me 20 years, she knows I can't swim and don't particularly like crowds - but went along with it. Except I blew it right then and there.

So I got home and chewed Eva out. No lying to people about me! At least loop me in!

The plot thickens - J's grandmother (according to Eva) thought her daughter was being a bit overprotective and told J to tell her that I was there. Now, I'm with J's grandmother here, buuuuut... I would not have gone along with this. She's going to be gone long before her daughter will, nobody ever moves away from this block.

I told Eva that if this sort of thing happens again, she needs to be out of the room when the actual lying is going on. If she's not officially party to it, it's not her problem. I think that was the right thing to say. Was that the right thing to say?

(Well, J doesn't seem to be grounded, anyway, at least not while her mother is working and her grandmother is watching, so my guess is Eva was telling the truth.)

Comments

[redbird]

Is the point of "it's okay if she's out of the room when the actual lying goes on" to give Eva an out if someone spots the lie? If so, it might work once or twice, but J's mother is likely to be suspicious of "Conuly will be there supervising" from now on whether she hears it from J or from Eva. And she may not see much practical or ethical difference between Eva lying to her, Eva encouraging J to lie to her so they can go to the pool together, and Eva not stopping J from lying because they want to go to the pool together. (I can see some, but I'm not the over-protective mother whose daughter just lied to her so she could go to the pool.)

Also, it's nice to know that there are still some neighborhoods in New York City where the kids get to roam around the way they did when I was growing up.

[conuly]

According to Eva's version of events, it was J's grandmother who suggested the lying. I'm operating under the assumption that this version of events is accurate - it's a bit too much for Eva to have thought up on her own, plus there's just no way that J's grandmother, who drove them home (I hadn't known that part of the story the first time around) had believed that I brought the girls there and then wandered off. She's also known me 20 years.

(At any rate, this specific story is unlikely to get any play again. I've now said quite vehemently that I don't intend to take the girls to the pool again, because they can both swim and are over the height limit. And I mean it.)

Eva would've been a lot happier if J hadn't gone to the pool at all. The two of them have a detente, but they're not friends, and she thinks J is a bad influence on N, who is her friend.

Also, it's nice to know that there are still some neighborhoods in New York City where the kids get to roam around the way they did when I was growing up.

They play right in the middle of the street.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

So it was actually J's grandmother who told J to lie to her mother about you being there? That's messed up.

I don't agree that being out of the room when the lie is being told suffices to make Eva 'not officially party to it'. If she is aware of the lie and yet goes along with it, she IS party to it.

It's particularly not okay for her to condone lies about her family members that could get them in trouble - hello, would she want her family members to stay silent while someone was telling lies about her? Suppose something had happened to J at the pool, while her mother thought you were there supervising?

All she has to say is "My aunt wouldn't be okay with that", which is perfectly true, and pretty-much indisputable.

[conuly]

If anything had happened, I'd've been useless whether I was there or not. I really hope J's mom is aware of that fact, because we've only known each other most of our lives.

At any rate, it's done now, and I doubt they'll drag me into a lie again given how easily this was caught out. I should actually talk to J next time I see her, tell her to lie about anybody else but me, no matter what. I don't want to get involved in cross-generational family disputes.