Parents - quick! Shield your young kids' eyes! I'm about to reveal a guilty secret before you're ready for them to learn it. And I don't mean Social Security.

Any kids reading this, watch out -- grammar lessons ahead!

If that didn't work, I'll try big words.

The secret involves a parental coverup -- we lie to our young about a mythical triumvirate of nocturnal callers who reward good behavior and proper dental care.

The most well known member is a portly fellow who travels via airborne caribou, dresses like a Wolfpack fan, and leaves playthings inside tacky footwear. Let's call him Scanty Cause.

The second member, Cheater Rottentale, is a rodent-like mammal -- specifically of family Leporidae, but let's not split hares -- who delivers confections in a fake grass-lined container made of interwoven veneer.

The third member is the most bizarre -- the Truth Scary. She brings neither amusements nor delectables -- just cold, hard cash -- in exchange for fallen dental ware.

These are unconscionable lies; we could refuse to perpetuate the fantasy, but we pay it forward in a desperate attempt to reclaim our own lost joy. Even that makes little sense -- the joy will only crash down on us again the second time around, bringing worse pain when our own kids learn the truth.

This almost happened to me last month with my kindergartner. (Although his cynical tendencies actually started two months ago, on a Florida vacation -- he questioned whether Sicky Souse is real or "just a grownup.")

Five is way too young to find out your parents are blatant liars. Still, it shouldn't surprise me -- he's already smarter than I am, and surprisingly worldly. He's been boning up on his geography, which was my paternal grandparents' downfall when it came to the first member of the trinity of lies -- my father debunked the Scanty Cause myth with a globe, calculating the impossibly large scale of Scanty's overnight task. At age 7. (I found out via the conspicuous K-Mart tags on alleged "workshop" creations -- I still suspect my parents left them there intentionally, to help me learn the truth before getting beaten up at my high school.)

Anyway, geography could be my downfall, too. The night before Easter, my son extemporaneously recited the U.S.A.'s 50 states and Canada's ... umm ... multiple provinces. Including Nunavut -- although that's technically a territory, he assured me. (I took his word for it. "Nunavut?" I can't even read Canadian.)

Such intellectual capacity is bound to produce skepticism, so it shouldn't have surprised me Easter morning when my little Alex Trebek asked, "Daddy? Is the FleecedYour Money real?" My heart crumbled like a hollow milk chocolate bunny, but I played nonchalant and said, "Cheater Rottentale? I guess." He accepted this with a vigorous " 'Kay!" and ran off in search of the goods. Whew -- lie saved, the Leporid receives a stay of execution.

Several days later he came home from school, excited to show me his first loose tooth -- perhaps a result of the aforementioned confections. He wiggled it with his tongue, then hit me with another doubt -- "Daddy, is the Truth Scary real?"

I tried a different tack this time -- more advanced deception. "I don't know a thing about her, but if she leaves you money, she must be real!"

" 'Kay!" I was congratulating myself for buying his faith until he added, "Maybe I'll get $10!" I started to refute this, then realized he'd outsmarted me -- I'd already copped to knowing nothing about her; I couldn't now claim to know her going rate. (Which ought to be government-regulated anyway, to keep rich parents from setting the bar too high.)

So I'm stuck with the first of many overinflated dental bills, but it's worth every penny, as it keeps the lie -- and the joy -- alive a little longer.

I'd give anything for that. Heck, I'd even walk to Nunavut and back.