imagine

Imagine a parent, a child. The child grows up; it's a teen now. And it goes on thinking and it tells its friends all about this: around age two or three, it had some horrible disease that just about carried it away to death. But it won; it beat death. The chances of living were incredibly slim, but it retained vivacity. It's a miracle that it's alive.

The child believes this because the parent always tells about it. And the child takes nothing for granted, because it is so lucky to be alive.



But really, the child never had any disease whatsoever. It was never close to the prongs of death; the parent made the whole thing up. The parent took advantage of the child's childhood amnesia. And simply made up a story.