School Stories

Every day when I pick HL up from school, my first question is always "how was kindergarten today?" The usual answers are positive but short; "fun", "great", "good", etc. A couple weeks ago, though, I got an entire paragraph out of him. I was shocked. It was apparently a news-worthy day... HL told me how a little boy in his class, C, kept pinching him even though he repeatedly asked him to stop. It got to the point that HL finally told his teacher Ms G and she tried to rectify the situation. But C kept it up until HL got pinched so hard, he had to go to the nurse's office- and C got sent to the principal. HL went on to tell me that because of the way C was acting, the class lost two gems out of their jar (the class gets a gem in a jar each time they act especially well, when they collect 10 gems, they get a prize)- and the class was mad about it. I found it a little strange that Ms G didn't mention anything to me, but HL never had any other problems, so I kind of forgot about it. That is, until HL's parent teacher conference, when having time to actually talk to Ms G jogged my memory. I asked about the incident. She had NO IDEA what I was talking about. She said she may have corrected C and forgotten it, but HL definitely had never gone to the nurse's office; nor did any of the rest of it happen. Excuse me?!? HL had so many little details and covered all possible angles of the story. I had no doubt whatsoever that it all happened. I was floored. HL was a deer in headlights... As this was his first fibbing incident, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I know that his mind is just chock-full of imagination and I like to think that he was just telling a story, as opposed to intentionally telling a lie. He agreed that he needs to alert us if he is telling a story and agreed to preface stories with phrases such as "let's pretend..." or "what if..." Then this evening, I learned that HL's dad did almost the same exact thing when he was in kindergarten! The only difference being that he was telling stories to his teacher, not the other way around. My MIL remembers going to his very first parent teacher conference and learning that his teacher was completely misinformed about her husband. How funny is that? Is it possible that rampant imagination and a tendency to tell fibs is hereditary? Hmmmm...