I have the opposite of a poker face: everything I think and feel is clearly reflected on my visage and in my body language.
Yet at the same time, being a writer, I have this ongoing urge to make up yarns. Or to embellish the ones I'm sharing -- when I tell it, it wasn't just a storm but a hurricane!
There's one story I've been telling a lot the past three years, and it now bores me to tears. It's about how I injured my neck and shoulder (repetitive strain, blah, blah, blah) and the long journey back to full health (yada, yada, yada).
So one day, as I was chatting with a TV host just before appearing on her show to talk about RIPE and trying to explain why I can only sit on hard chairs, she asked the question I've come to dread: "How did you injure yourself?" But this time, instead of a polite and short recap, this popped out of my mouth instead:
"I fell off a glacier."
I nearly burst out laughing -- where did that come from?
"Oh, that's terrible," she replied. We shook our heads as we contemplated the very thought, and I ducked my chin in a gesture that felt like something a humble explorer might do. I could actually feel the points being racked up in her head. "Oooh, glacier. How outdoorsy!" and, "Oooh, glacier. Nearly extinct!"
Did I do it again? You bet! The next time I was with a client who'd hired me to give a speech to her senior team and, yes, I had just switched to a hard chair. After hearing the story and going through the ritual head-shaking, she paused, looked me in the eye and asked, "Which glacier?"
What would you have done? Fessed up? Broken into a cold sweat? Made up a name, figuring what were the chances that someone had memorized the name of every glacier in the world and would know you were bluffing? Changed the subject? I realized the game was over. I told the truth. And we both had a good laugh.
Have you ever felt the urge to tell a whopper -- in good fun or for any other reason? How did it work out when you did? What about when you were a kid? And can you tell when others are? For example: with my youngest stepson, the giveaway that he was making it up was something we called, "wiggle lips." Do tell!
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Hmm, this is what happens when I write late at night ... convoluted posts, lol.
We were above 6000 feet and just staring to descend. I slipped on a glacier and blew out my knee. My son whittled me a splint and we hobbled from stream to stream where I would kneel in and freeze that leg for while.
It got dark. We were exhausted. We lay down occasionally to taunt the onset of exposure. At one point we had to put the splint on my left leg because it wore out. My son stepped in a whole, but didn't suffer any serious injury. He kept singing because he was sure it would keep bears away.
Oh yeah! All we had was a very old book reading light; and its batteries didn't lst the night.
We made it to the parking lot at about 5am - had started about 10 the previous morning.
That was the Mother Mountain hike. A big circle some people jog. I went back by myself about five years later and took three days to cover the same ground.
I still have several scars from where the split rubbed away the skin.
That's no whooper. It's about average or perhaps more like par for the
So, every time they ask me my age, I tell them I'm twenty-five and something. This was working well until a smart one said: ok, teacher, you're most probably 25 on each leg." That's when I started telling them that I was as young as they could tell, for instance, 24, 22. After a while, this became a nice joke, before the tests, chemistry tests, they were volunteering the info that I look 18.
It's nice to make fun of oneself, whatever works in the classroom.
However, there's always a small percentage of the population who say "oh my so and so comes from ---- and you sound like her/him." And then I have to fess up...
I have lied alot in my life but from Highschool to adulthood and current I've been whopper light. 99% of all my lies are to save someone's feelings or a harsh reality that would do nothing but cause pain.
I tend to lean very hard toward telling the truth too much mainly because my mother spent most of her life spinning fabrication for a variety entertaining reasons. Her pattern projected me into always wanting to face the truth and seek it out no matter what.
The only one I can think of, is once in college I told a friend I danced at Chip n Dales one time. Then less than a year later I was invited by a group of girl friends to dance amateur night at a male strip club and I did, so I obsolved myself of my previous whopper. Does that count ?
I suspect most people are in the 'I only tell lies to protect feelings' (or sometimes save ourselves) category. Which is why it was such a "wha?" when the whopper popped out of my mouth.
Interesting...