Ira Glass

But when they came downstairs on Christmas morning, there were only two small boxes waiting for them.

The box became Harriet's prized possession.

She kept it on display in her room through elementary school, through high school.

If friends asked her about it, she'd say, oh yeah, it was painted by trained monkeys.

Nobody ever challenged her on it, maybe because she believed it herself so completely.

And then one day, she was home from college, back in the house where she grew up.

Up until reading that story, Harriet thought that her sister's lies had been only to torment her.

Like the time Harriet swallowed an apple seed and her big sister convinced her that she had an apple tree growing inside her.

She'd always been jealous of her sister, always wanted to be the big sister.

But reading her sister's story that day made her realize how responsible her sister felt for her and for their entire family, and how there were benefits to being the baby.

It was good to learn all that.

But the vision of the lie, that we live in a world where monkeys can be trained to paint, is hard to give up.

I know what she means.

For me, there's something appealingly weird about a world where only people who happen to have been born with the name Nielsen get to decide what goes on television.

And not long after the day that Jodi Mace's co-worker set her straight about the word zing, she found herself on the opposite side of the exact same situation.

She was having a conversation with another co-worker, and he asked her if elves were real.

Elves?

Like that live in the forest, she asked, with the pointy toes?

He nodded.

She paused.