While my friend Emily was visiting her mother, they went for a walk and bumped into an old family acquaintance. "Is this your daughter?" the woman asked. "Oh, I remember her when she was this high. How old is she now?"
Without pausing, Emily's mother said, "Twenty-four." Emily, 35, nearly fainted on the spot.
After everyone had said their good-byes, Emily asked her mother why she'd told such a whopper.
"Well," she replied, "I've been lying about my age for so long, it suddenly dawned on me that I'd have to start lying about yours too."