Save the Shams!

“What are ‘Shams’?” Brandy asks with equal bits impatience and curiosity.

“What?” I reply having no idea what she’s talking about.

“Shams. SHAMS!” She’s getting irritated.

“Babe, I have no idea what you’re talking about. What’s a shams? Do you mean Sham 69 the Oi band?”

“No! Magical creatures called shams that you told the girls about.”

For the life of me I have no memory of this at all.

Shams?

I look at her with wide eyes, throw up my hands and shrug.

“They were feeling especially sad about the poor shams being kept in captivity. They were complaining about it on the way to school today and asked if we could go and visit them in their factory.”

It rushed back to me.

“Oh god.”

“YEAH!”

“Did I never tell them that wasn’t real?”

“When did you tell them any of it?”

“A few years ago.”

“What?!”

 Clementine and Grace were 3 and 5, I was washing, or rather helping them wash their hair.

“Don’t use too much shampoo.” I said, “It’s mean to the Shams.”

 “It’s not like we didn’t raise them with a bunch of wacky false beliefs. Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, The EASTER BUNNY! That motherfucker shits chocolate eggs!” I’m trying to defend myself, but I know that the shams story was too much. I can’t really believe I didn’t immediately tell them it was BS. 

“Clementine is EIGHT! Can you imagine if she’d brought this up at school?” My wife is also in a state of total disbelief. Who the fuck is she married to who would tell her kids some wildly absurd story about poor oppressed shams.

“I feel like I thought maybe they knew it was fake, like because it’s so ridiculous.” I’m grasping at straws.

 “What are shams?” Clementine asks.

“They’re these small magical creatures that a big evil corporation caught in a jungle. We wash our hair with their fecal matter.” I say nonchalantly.

“What’s that?” She asks.

“Poo. A single Sham can easily produce a whole bottle of Sham-Poo over the course of its lifetime. But they never get to go outside or get their tummies rubbed, which I’ve heard they really like.”

“Are they nice?” Grace asks.

“Yeah, it’s awful. But you guys need tangle free hair, so we keep buying it.”

In all fairness to myself, I enjoy the sham-poo story a bit too much. It reassures me that most of what I believe about the world is just stories that someone made up, it really takes the pressure off.

The girls miss the shams, I think they preferred the world where magical creatures shit shampoo for their tangle free hair.