In an effort to quell his 10-year-old son’s whining about having to rake the leaves, local dad Steven Benson once again repeated the impossible claim that when he was young, he had to walk uphill five miles to and from school.
“I mean it, Bobby,” he said. “I didn’t even have a bike. Just two feet and the fear of being late and earning myself a detention, which would have meant a spanking.”
While his son has yet to question the veracity of the claim, local geologists have long since dismissed Benson’s story as “pure nonsense.”
“Unless Mr. Benson was moving his house to a different part of town during the actual school day, the notion that he could have walked uphill in two different directions simply doesn’t square with how geology works,” said Dr. Linda Aron, professor of geology at Ohio State University. “What’s more likely is that Mr. Benson was exaggerating the truth to trick his son into thinking his own life is easy by comparison to his father’s.”
Experts also doubt whether Benson “started working at the local factory when he was 9” or “made his own bed starting at 2 years old.”