Saturday, November 13, 2010

Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, I'll spin off into a tangent which is somewhat factual sounding, and completely untrue. The example that comes to mind at the moment is convincing a friend of mine that there's no such thing as narwhals ("Sea unicorns? Really?"), while we were working on a project for some class. (Apparently it took a while for other people to convince him otherwise; I am vaguely proud of this, if not exactly proud of being proud of this, if that makes any sense.) This is a thing I do all the time.

Why? Part of it is because it's hilarious, sure. Another part is that I'm terrified that if I didn't tell blatant lies from time to time, people would just accept everything I said without questioning it. It sounds like a silly concern, but it actually happens more than I'd like, and it bothers me whenever it does. I've tried being that guy that always knows what he's talking about and never leads you astray, and it is no fun. :(

It's also a lot of fun to tell elaborate fictions, of course! You get to re-cast a piece of the world under an alternate system of rules, which isn't quite internally consistent, and try to run ahead of the other person to paper over the inconsistencies before they find them. If they catch up and figure out a hole in my story that I can't work around, then I lose; it's sort of like a mental game of tag.

On the other hand, there's also the possibility that I just inherited it, since my dad does the same thing sometimes. >_> There's a story my family loves to tell, about how one of my aunts asked my dad how he kept the lawn so nicely mown. He told her all about the Rent-a-Sheep service, where they'll bring a few sheep out to your house every once in a while to munch on your grass, and he told it so convincingly that everybody bought it. My dad: occasionally pretty awesome. :D

2 comments:

Kiriska said...

LOL, your dad IS pretty awesome. XD

I used to do this a lot in high school. Except the things I said were very obviously lies, but I would say them in such a convincing manner people questioned whether I actually believed it myself or I know that it's a lie. XD (The best is the I was raised my mermaids off the coast of Prince Edward Island story.)

Æther said...

These are the conversations that I miss most since coming to pharmacy school. With No P.Static around there's no one around with whom to play these kind of games. Though really I'd consider us more of a team trying to confuse others listening in to our conversation (serves them right :)), I find that people here are most often interested in getting quick information and forgetting about the details involved. That, and I miss our games of Botticelli. The LANs I don't really miss. Complex board games give far more opportunities for conversation.