How many times a day do adults pretend?

A close friend Minnesota journalist Gerrie Anderson wrote a scrapbook of life in 1999 that contained over 50 years of her columns. She is now deceased, but her book, My Say,  brought me lots of smiles. I would like to share a few excerpts from one of my favorite columns called “It’s A Deceiving World.”
It begins with a youngster’s mother picking him up after a nasty fall and a scrap on the knee. He is reminded “big boys don’t cry and just pretend it doesn’t hurt.” That’s how youngsters practice up to become adults. We adults are just one big bunch of pretenders.
How many times a day do adults pretend? Every minute, all day – that’s all!
First thing in the morning, the alarm rings and they pretend they don’t mind and spring out of bed; or they didn’t hear the alarm and roll over for a few more minutes of sleep. Once out of the sack they launch into a full day of make believe.
Good businessmen will greet obnoxious customers with smiles... employees will hide yawns and look alert... and the boss will sneak out for coffee under the guise of a trip to the bank.
Back at the ranch, the housewife sees the last kid off to school and heads back to bed. She snoozes and the phone rings and the caller asks, “Did I wake you?”
She responds, “Heavens no. I got up a long time ago.” Or at preschooler naptime she might have snuck off for a few winks herself. But she’ll carry a dustrag to answer the door so the unexpected caller won’t guess what she’s really doing.
Serious dieters pretend they’re not hungry. Some of the rest of us pretend we haven’t eaten.
A gracious dinner guest will rave about the food. A gracious host will strike a nonchalant pose and insist it’s something she just tossed together quickly.
Old friends, meeting after 20 years, will pretend the other hasn’t aged. New acquaintances, meeting for the first time, pretend so doggone many things it’s impossible to catalog them!
No siree.
Never let anyone tell you pretending is just for kids.
Mostly, it’s for grown-ups.
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Again, thanks for the smiles, Gerrie!
RL Furse  is publisher emeritus of the News-Register