Lying about your age takes on a new meaning - and great results - for Elisabeth Easther in Fiji. Photo / 123RF
Lying about your age takes on a new meaning - and great results - for Elisabeth Easther in Fiji. Photo / 123RF
Lying doesn't get you anywhere... or does it?
In 1977 my family - Mum, Dad, Aunt Betty, my two brothers and me - went to Fiji for the August school holidays. I'd never been outside New Zealand and I was giddy with excitement. To ramp up the anticipation, twomonths prior to departure, Dad made a chart and each day, one of us kids would colour in a square, bringing us another day closer to paradise.
If ever there was a whiff of misbehaviour, Dad would say: "That's it. If you kids don't knock it off, no one's going to Fiji." I didn't know about idle threats, so for two months I was a model citizen.
We stayed at The Fijian where a treasure chest was chained to a plinth near the beach. Each morning at dawn the children staying at the resort would tip toe out to see if it was still there, or had it been buried. One morning we discovered it gone, so we dug all day like moles to try and locate the buried treasure. Some other kids got lucky, but I didn't care because I just dug digging.
During that vacation, one of my brothers, Richard, made a friend for life at the chessboard with the giant pieces, and there was a wood carver in the souvenir shop called Joseph who tolerated long visits from me and my other brother Philip. When we left, Joseph gave me a little house he'd carved, on which he'd inscribed:
The wooden carving Elisabeth Easther received in Fiji on a family holiday, aged 7. Photo / Supplied
In the restaurant one evening, a black-and-white sea snake hissed out of the rock wall and a waiter shooed it away with a napkin. I was enchanted. Another night at dinner, the lights dimmed and the smiling staff appeared from the kitchen, one of them carrying a candle-covered cake.
They were singing the birthday song. With harmonies. My parents swivelled in their chairs, as did Aunt Betty, to see whose birthday it was. My brothers showed only vague curiosity because they knew none of us had a birthday in August. But I knew where the cake was headed because I might have told some of my friends in the kitchen that it was my birthday - that I was no longer 7 and today I was 8.
As much as I enjoyed the attention my little fib earned me at the time, I had not anticipated a cake. I was simultaneously elated and alarmed.
The cake came closer, until eventually it was placed in front of me. I blew out the candles and wished most fervently for my parents not to expose me as a liar. My birthday wish was granted instantaneously because my parents rearranged their expressions from those of cheerful bystanders at a stranger's birthday, to proud parents of a girl turned 8.
Elisabeth Easther, aged 7 - or is it 8? - in Fiji. Photo / Supplied
Once confident I'd got away with it, I graciously accepted everyone's warm wishes and the cake was cut and shared. My mother may have widened her eyes in a manner that suggested we would talk later and I would turn 8 in September, which somehow made it less of a lie.
In spite of my falsehood being such a resounding success, I've never pulled that stunt again. Besides, these days, one birthday per annum is quite enough.
