My wife M and I used to joke a lot about writing a book entitled The Unethical Parent about the necessarily shady business of raising human children.

When our two daughters were little, we used to answer their absurd questions by telling unbelievable whoppers.  What do you say to a 3 year old who asks you why you're stopping at the red light.  They don't understand the law, police, jail, and stuff like that.  At least not in our family.  So, I finally told a very young Miss Tween that red was my favorite color and that we were stopping to look at the pretty light.  Miss Tween understood that even if she didn't understand why mom and dad were laughing so hard.  

The Unethical Parent was a natural outgrowth of our love of lying.  We were going to write chapters on "Lying to Your Young Children" and "Making Your Teen-agers Miserable."  Why not we thought--they're going to be miserable anyway.  Why shouldn't we have fun with it.  We talked about The Unethical Parent with our friends shared success stories about how unethical strategies really worked and generally had a good time with the theme.

Eventually, the chatter about The Unethical Parent passed and we moved onto other ways to have fun around the house.

But last night I had an idea.

Miss Teen and I were at the check-out counter at the local Walmart in Morehead, KY when she reached for some gum.

Pretty much like usual.

But I didn't make my usual decision about whether she had been generally cooperative enough that I would pay for the gum.

Instead, I said "ah, I see you're getting the "Zitstarter" brand again.

Well, that threw her for a loop because she really doesn't like zits.  And, after a moment's hesitation, Miss Teen put her down her super-sugar gum and reached for the sugar-free stuff. 

And I gladly paid for it.

A minor victory for evil parenting.

But a victory all the same.