"OK," she said as she headed to the table.

A few minutes later I noticed she had eaten most of the beans, all of the mac and cheese, but hadn't touched the meat. "Momma, I don't like this," she said pointing to the bbq style sandwich I had made her on a hamburger bun.

"Why not?"

"It's too sweet." Now if I had been serving her brussels sprouts I could understand, but nothing to her is too sweet. This was a slow cooked beef bbq with brown sugar and hickory: moist, tender, and almost heavenly. I knew she was just being obstinate.

"But you love sweet things," I said. "You have a sweet tooth." She stopped for a minute, touching her teeth as she thought about what I was saying. It was hard to keep a straight face.

"Where?"

"Oh, the sweet tooth is the one next to the big one in the front." It came out so fast that I didn't even realize what a tall tale I was telling.

"This one?" she said, pointing to her left incisor.

"No, one in from that one." I moved her finger over one tooth.

"This is my sweet tooth?"

"Yep," I lied, knowing I was taking advantage of my daughter's gullible nature. "That's the tooth that makes you like all sweets. Now you can finish your meat because you have a sweet tooth."

She was amazed at her special tooth, touching it with one hand, thrilled by the new discovery as she speared little pieces of food with her other.

I know that lying is one of the "Thou shall nots," but my little white one got three more bites into her without any more argument. Certainly on the big chart in the sky those two things can cancel each other out!