Tall Tales

Last night we were at my best friend’s house and the two of them started talking about the made-up stories they told their siblings.

Soon everyone was cracking up as we recounted some of the most bizarre stories like when I was little and Cindy told me the house down the street was made of chocolate and I was going to go lick it to see.

Stephanie, my best friend, told her brother once that an invisible guy wanted to say hi to him and give him $100.00. Her brother, determined not to fall for another ploy, refused to “meet” this new rich friend. Finally, Stephanie told her brother that if he didn’t say hi to the guy then he couldn’t get the money and her brother folded much to the hysterical laughter coming out of Stephanie then like a machine gun.

Cindy told me once that she babysat for a family who had four girls – Bronwyn, Melaronz, Summer, and Skylar but they never existed. She had spun such elaborate stores about them and their antics, I was enthralled.

One day after years of stories and being fooled I decided I wasn’t going to believe her any more. I was about 11 by this time and she was approaching me with one more story.

She kept telling me for weeks that this girl Jamie down the street really wanted to meet me but I wouldn’t fall for it.

Finally one day, I gave in and said I would meet this mystery girl.

With a serious expression Cindy said, “Well, it’s too late now.”

I asked why and she said, “Well, she was having a big fight with her sister and she ran out in the street and got hit by a car. She died.”

It was years later I found out the girl never existed!

I also remember my grandpa telling us that because we ate so much watermelon we would grow the fruit in our tummies from the seeds we swallowed.

My best friend in childhood, Kristina, told me that the tree roots that came up from the ground that stuck straight up was the devil trying to pull us down to hell.

My other childhood friend, James, who lived next door, told me the dried footprints in my driveway were from the Boogie Man when they were really from the postman.

Then there was the “Bloody Mary” game where my sisters and I would go in my sister Debbie and Joy’s room, turn out the lights, face the mirror and say, “Bloody Mary” a bunch of times until we “saw” an image of a woman’s bloody face. When I would do it and see it they would run out of the room and leave me behind, scared to death.

Cindy had me convinced also that our cat, Malty went to cat school during the day while we were in class.

“You don’t think cats just hang out all day, do you? They have to have something to do. Where do you think they go all day?” she’d ask, explaining that instead of grades they had steps one through twelve.

She even went so far as to point out a pink office building, proclaiming it cat school though it was really an insurance agency.

And when Cindy was old enough to know that Santa didn’t exist but I still believed she told me when I asked how he got in our house with no chimney, that he had a magic key to every house in the world, passing on a tale my dad told her.

According to a story on New Horizons for Learning (newhorizons.org) a teacher once asked his third grade students: “Do you want me to read you a story or tell you one?”

“Oh, tell us one!” they exclaimed. “Because then we can see into your eyes!”