On my tenth birthday I told two lies: one to my family and one to the cops—the NYPD.

On the morning of July 2, 1963, my dad drove my brother and me to Prospect Park and dropped us off beside The Lake. We had our two new fishing poles, and worms, and sandwiches. My dad would come back after lunch to pick us up.

My mom had thought that enrolling us in the A&S Fishing Derby would be a good way to celebrate my birthday. We didn’t protest, though we hadn’t ever fished much. We were city kids.    

We caught nothing and our worms were gone. We ate our lunches way too soon. It was hot. My brother decided to walk home. He told me to wait for Dad with the fishing poles. He was only one year older than me, but that gave him more say than I had. He left.

He had a long walk ahead of him. We lived four miles away, in the so-called “ghetto” of Bedford-Stuyvesant, where my dad was a pastor. But as young as we were, we knew our way around Brooklyn.

Eventually I took off too. I worried about disobeying Dad, but I wasn’t going to wait by myself all day, and besides, my brother did it first. Only it wasn’t fair that I had to carry the fishing poles.

I walked out of the park, past Flatbush Avenue and then Kings Highway, and after some blocks, there was a police station. I saw an opportunity. “I’ll tell them I’m lost and they’ll give me an ice cream cone, like on TV, and then they’ll drive me home, and everyone will see me in the cop car.”

So I went inside and told the officer behind the window that I was lost. That was the first lie. But the cop did not seem delighted to see me, and he treated me like I was a bother. No offer of an ice cream cone. No offer of anything. He sent me to a bench in the hallway, and I had to wait there and keep quiet. I sat there wishing I hadn’t done it. But if I left they’d know I was lying.

Eventually they called my mom, and they put me and my poles in the back seat of a car and drove me home. Of course I knew the way, but I didn’t say anything. And then there was nobody there on Herkimer Street to witness my triumph—being delivered in a police car on my tenth birthday.

My mom and dad came out and thanked the cops. When they drove away I told the second lie. I told my parents I got an ice cream cone, and had a good time with the cops in the station. I had to repeat the whole lie to my brother and my little sister, and finally somebody was impressed.

In my childhood I thought of myself as a liar, because I made up stories. To impress my brother I told tales of all the wild things that happened in fifth grade. And then, when my mom invited my teacher for dinner, I was terrified of being exposed. My brother did ask Mr. Hintz about the things I had told him, and Mr. Hintz said, “Yes, Danny has quite an imagination.” I got off! Nobody called me a liar! But I was guilty anyway, and I kept praying to Jesus to change me.

Forty-two years later my wife and I bought an apartment on Prospect Park Southwest, and from my study window I could see the very spot on The Lake where we caught no fish. I began to think about that incident, and my lying. Had my parents believed me about the ice cream cone? Maybe not. Did the cops believe me that I was lost? I was the least of their problems. As for my brother, when one day we were remembering our Brooklyn childhoods, I casually mentioned that I’d lied about the ice cream cone. He was more shocked than I expected.

I long regarded the significance of that incident to be the foibles of an immature Puritan conscience—mine. Only recently did I realize that I was missing the obvious: my privilege. My White privilege, even at the age of ten in Brooklyn, New York, in 1963.

My brother and I were the only White boys in our church and the only ones we knew of in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and all our local friends and playmates were Black. But which one of our friends could assume that he could walk through any other neighborhood in Brooklyn? Which of our playmates would dare to enter a precinct and lie to the police or even imagine an ice cream cone? But I had just assumed I could.

I had the benefits of all the biggest lies in Brooklyn.