by Richard Timothy | Dec 12, 2011 | My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
I have a memory stick, and by memory stick I don’t mean a wooden paddle that my fifth grade teacher used on students to help them remember why they broke one of his class rules. No, what I mean is a USB key, the little 1GB data storage device that holds all of my writing, every book, Smirk, and a lot of really bad poetry I wrote when I was in high school . . . high school poetry is a lot like discovering the girl you made out with at your friends party turned out to be your third cousin that you never knew existed at happened to be in town for the week to go to the fair. It’s something that you did, but you never share it with anyone, ever . . . ah crap. Well, you get the point.
The nice thing about technology is that I’m able to take my writing with me where ever I go, and often times do. When wearing jeans I’ll keep the memory stick in that little change pocket that has shacked up with the front right pocket of all jeans everywhere. I remember those pockets being referred to as change pockets, designed to hold your loose change, but seriously when was the last time someone ever used one of those pockets? If it hadn’t of been for the invention of memory sticks I doubt anyone would have a use for them.
Usually, when I get home I always take the memory stick out of my pocket and plug it into my computer for any after work writing I plan to accomplish for the evening. Okay, so not always, just every time except this past week. Monday I arrived home feeling a bit under the weather. One of the many joys of working in an office is, much like going to school when I was a kid, there is no controlling who comes in sick. As a result, you spend your day in confined quarters with someone who unwittingly and relentlessly shared their cold, or other sickly ailments with you (which does occasionally mean you hear about what they did over the weekend, and believe me that can certainly fall under the sickly realm of sharing a cubicle).
For the following two days I spent a good portion of my day in bed, downing cold medicine and drinking Emergen-C in much the same fervor as Orson Welles on a bender. This resulted in me failing the simple daily activity of placing my memory stick on my desk next to my PC. Thursday morning when I went to my office to get my “don’t leave home without” items; my wallet, my phone, my scan badge for work, my keys and, something was missing . . . my memory stick. I search around my office, and then I went to the bedroom to see if it was in my night stand. That is when the thought that I forgot to take it out of my pocket, came to mind, but they were nowhere to be found.
I asked Angela and that is when I learned that my cutie-baby-sweetie-pie-wifey-pooh, in a gesture of kindness and taking care of my, opted to do a load of laundry for me, which is where my pants had gotten off too. I pit started to form in my stomach. My jeans had already made the move from washer to dryer and as I rushed and pulled them out, to my relief, the pocket was empty . . . and so was the washer. I asked Angela to keep an eye around the house for the memory stick and headed to work in hopes I had accidentally left it there on Monday.
Around 11 AM, Angela called with the news that my memory stick (holding all of my writing) had been discovered . . . in the dryer. I hadn’t even thought about digging through the dryer, and since things were still a little damp after I check my jeans, I had turned the dryer back on for another forty minutes. There is a very hollow feeling that starts in your gut when you realize two decade of writing might have been washed away in one regular extra-large wash cycle, it’s kind of like you stomach had turned into the starting point of a mini black hole. I’m sure if I was in that situation the second the spin cycle began I would have done a complete memory dump.
Angela took the stick and plugged it into her computer, filled with the same amount of hope that all teenage boys everywhere use when sit through a sparkly vampire movie, hoping they just might get to make out with the girl that forced them to suffer through it. I’m not sure how, but as it turned out the hoping worked, well it was either that or China made a much better cheap one gig memory stick than I could have ever imagined possible, which just sounds even more ridiculous as I write it down. Who knows maybe the extra drying is what did it, whatever the reason, not a single gigabit was damaged, water logged, or destroyed.
Plus, the memory stick looks almost brand new. All the old smudges are completely gone. I think I might get a new memory stick for my birthday though. I think the old one has earned its retirement and should be placed into my storage drawer of nostalgia. Plus, I finally got around to getting all of my writing safely stored in four new and more permanent locations, so I can now check that off my “to do” list too. I wouldn’t recommend anyone do this, ever, but in my case, I actually worked out for the best, which is definitely a Smirk worth sharing.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: USB key, drunk Orson Welles, bad phone call, and cheering man.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Nov 30, 2011 | Gratefully Grateful, I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction
So apparently November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, which comes across as something that Mork of Ork would use as the punch line for one of his jokes on Mork & Mindy. The idea is that from November 1 – 30 you write like a banshee in heat and . . . okay sorry about that, bad analogy, in fact it brings up a whole slew of questions that I really don’t even want to attempt to try to answer. The goal is to write a novel during the month of November, well, 50,000 words of a story anyway, and apparently this thing has been around since 1999.
I happened to first hear about NaNoWriMo a week before November 1 of this year, and regardless of the who, what, why, when, or where, I took the plunge and devoted this month to writing a novel. I even managed to get a Smirk or two out in the process; of course it also attributed me to miss a Smirk or two in the process as well. But as of 1:15PM (with 15 minutes left in my lunch hour to spare) I hit the 50,000 word mark, thus winning the self-satisfying goal of writing a novel during the month of November . . . without actually finishing the book. On a plus note I’m right near the climax of the story, so that, and the fact that I have no outline, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.
The whole experience did get me thinking about goals though, and how simply rearranging how we choose to identify with that goal can make it attainable when you would otherwise swear it isn’t. When I first thought of writing a book in a month, I’ll admit, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I can do that.” Being that it was my first year, there was a certain amount of novice optimism on my part, which pushed me to start off like a super star, almost doubling the recommended word goal for the first day. (To hit 50,000 words I needed to write 1,667 words every day.) With that much of a lead I did something I knew I could get away with on day two, I slacked. Getting a whopping 200 words from two paragraphs written up, leaving me well behind my goal overall and for the day.
As the month progressed I discovered that there was a little something I had overlooked that might not be a willing to comply with my goal as I had planned. That something was family, friends, work, in short, life in general. Still I had my goal and I was committed to reaching it, which meant that on more than one occasion I stayed up until 5 or 6 AM on a weekend writing to catch up so that I could reach my goal.
In the end, there were a few things that I learned from the process, things that I’d like to pass one to anyone willing to read them.
- First, when you set a goal give it a deadline. If it is a bigger goal, break it up in steps that you can assign week or month long deadlines to.
- Get local support. Let those around you know about it. If you have a significant other, let them know about it from the very beginning. That way when they come into your office wanting to watch three hours’ worth of White Collar on Netflix they are much more understanding when you tell them you can’t.
- Act, it’s that simple. A goal is something you work towards, you must act otherwise your goal is nothing more than an idea.
- Don’t forget the people around you. Make time to connect with the people in your home and life. They are much more supportive if you take a break and watch one episode, or skip and entire day of writing to cook and enjoy and amazing day with your family. It also can recharge you, if you have days that nothing seems to go right.
- Remember the goal and don’t get caught up in the idea of the goal. Fortunately, the goal was to write 50,000 words, which in my case equated to 158 pages. What I realized is that the words were the goal, not the novel. While a novel may seem like a large daunting task, words are small little things that we use every day, all day long. Words are the things that make up any and every novel. Focusing on the small pieces that make up the whole is how I met my personal goal and won the NaNoWriMo challenge for 2011.
- Celebrate when you are done. When you meet your deadline and complete your goal, celebrate your accomplishment. You did what you said you were going to do and you deserve to acknowledge you achievement. Embrace that you succeeded. (Which is exactly what I’m going to be doing tonight!)
The accomplished does feel great, but the getting there was truly the best part. That is where our stories come from . . . and ultimately where, who we are today, come from. And, even though I may have failed to mention to all of you that I was going to be in the trawls of creative literary abandonment, I just wanted to say thanks for sticking around while I wrote like a banshee in heat (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Also, yes, I’ll be sure to let you all know when this new novel is finished.
Image Sources: http://www.nanowrimo.org
And Google Images, keywords: writing, and a world of thanks.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Nov 16, 2011 | Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Public Service Announcement
So this past Sunday my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh, her sister and I all went down to Park City. She had a two-day retreat for her mastermind group and her sister was there to help out. The retreat started on Monday, but since she had a room for Sunday and Monday, so I drove down with her to spend the night so we could spend some more time together before our crazy, busy week got started. Although, I should mention there was an addition reason for wanting to go . . . which I’ll get to in a minute.
I’m not sure what, or why it is, but there is something absolutely delightful about walking into a nice hotel room. It’s a little like walking into a display home and being told that everything you see is yours for the next twenty-four hours. It’s a little like shopping for a possible dream home, but on a much smaller scale.
Some people rate hotel rooms on the amenities, the size of the room, the décor, the size of the television and the number of channels they have access to, how comfortable the bed (which is my number to criteria), etc. For me though, it’s the tub. It can be a sub par room, but if they have a large comfortable tub that I can soak in until my fingers and toes are all water logged and wrinkly, like a prune in a rainstorm, well then you have my full appreciation and recommendation to others . . . Hotel Park City, if I had a hat on, I’d tip it in your honor. Yes, this was the other driving factor for going to Park City for the night, they had an amazing tub. What? My tub at home sucks, so when I have the opportunity to take a bath in a highly comfy and soakable tub, I’m there.
While the hotel was getting our room ready, we decided to head out for dinner, stopping at a local brewpub, mainly because there was a store that the girls wanted to check out that was right next door, but we had eaten at the place before for lunch a few years ago, and this is where this Smirk actually begins. Dinner was fine, not mind-blowingly delicious, but superior in every way to any and everything you might get from some crappy fast food place . . . so, all fast food places.
Now occasionally, after eating a meal, I have an urge to . . . well, expunge a past meals to make a little more room for what I have just consumed. Sunday turned out to be one of those occasions. I excused myself and headed to the men’s room. As I open the door the room remained dark, but as I walk in, a sensor went off and the lights kick on. So I made my way to the only stall in the room and took a seat.
I have dealt with sensor lights before, they turn on when you enter and shut off after you have left. I believe they function based on movement sensors, and as long as they pick up movement they stay on. Once they stop picking up any movement, a timer kicks on and when that time runs out, they shut off. However, as I’m sitting there, dealing with the need at hand, all of the sudden I hear a quick “click” noice and everything goes black.
There are a few things that go through your mind when you are sitting on a public toilet in a place you do not know all that well and all of a sudden all the lights go out. “Ah shit,” were the first words out of my mouth. My first thought was to yell out for help, using that “Hello?” yell that all people use in horror movies when they hear a noise in the dark and instead of finding the others they decide to go investigate the sound. My next thought was to try to get sensor to kick back on. It seemed to me that the stall wall was a little too high and based on where the sensor was located, once I sat down, it could not pick up any movement. I started grabbing handfuls of toilet paper off the roll, wadding it up and throwing it over the stall wall in an attempt to make the sensor go off and turn the lights back on. After my fifth attempt, it was clear that it wasn’t going to work.
I decided to only way to fix my predicament was to stop sitting in the dark and make my way to the sensor. So with one had holding my trousers around my knees, I stood up. I started waving my free hand over my head, clearly above the stall wall, but to no prevail. I then made my way to the stall door, using my hand to slide along the wall, stopping at the space between the stall wall and door. I felt around for the latch and just before flipping it open, one last thought went through my mind.
I was not thrilled at the prospect of making my way to the middle of the bathroom so the light would kick on, but more than that I was rather worried that someone might choose that exact moment to walk in to the men’s room and have the lights kick back on leaving them with the image of me wandering around the bathroom in the dark with my pants around my knees forever burned into their memory, accompanied by years of therapy trying to get it out.
Fortunately, the second I swung the stall door open and peeked my head around to corner the lights kicked back on. Let me tell you, the fear of having the lights go out while you are sitting on a toilet is an amazing motivator to finish your business as quickly as possible. About a minute later, after I picked up the wads of toilet paper I had thrown earlier, I was washing my hands and getting the hell out of that “Loo of Darkness”.
When I got back to the table I kept the events to myself. For some reason I wasn’t in a very talkative mood concerning my little “lights out” encounter. But give me a few days and here I am sharing it with the world with a smirk on my face. Considering how it ended, things could have been a lot worse. I’ll tell you what though, I’m much more cautious now when I enter a restroom with automatic lights, and as a public service, trust me when I say you should too.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: Park City, wrinkled fingers, bathroom stall, and paper stuck on shoe.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Nov 9, 2011 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Traditionally I like groups . . . most groups . . . groups that comprise of me and people I like, or groups that consist of me and people who like me. Some groups carry with it a status of greatness and awe, say like being at Woodstock. There are also groups within groups that hold even greater prestige, like remembering being at Woodstock. It can work in the opposite as well. I’m sure if you happened to let someone know you took an active part in burning down someone’s store during the ’92 LA riots, they might look at you in the exact opposite of greatness and awe. Regardless, being part of groups can carry with them good or bad things. This Smirk takes a look at some for the difficulties people experience when dealing with taking part in a group.
Now if you happen to be dealing with a new group in which you do not know many, or any, of the others in the group, there are a few ways to get around this and still fit in. First, find the “chatter box”. The chatter box is one of two people in a large group, they are either the know-it-all that is very insistent that they be the center of attention and everyone listen to them talk, or they are the impaired know-it-all, which is usually attributed to copious amounts of Scotch being ingested into their system. It is very possible that in many situations this will be the same person regardless.
All you have to do is position yourself near the group of people the chatter-box is talking at, since they rarely engage in conversation. Usually these people love to hear themselves speak, but since talking out loud to yourself is often equated to as a “crazy person” attribute, they simply talk at people in groups to avoid the fact they are just talking to themselves. They may occasionally ask someone in the group a question, but rest assured it is only rhetorical; no answer is required. For this reason alone, if you are new to a crowd, this is a great way to be in a part of something that looks like an actual social exchange where you participate by not participating. Note, there is the rare exception where a question is not rhetorical, that is why it is better to hang on the outskirts of the group as opposed to being one of the people up front.
Now let’s say you want to get engaged in an actual conversation. This is good, you can wander around eves dropping until you hear someone talking about a topic you are familiar with. However, be wary of conversing in a group more than three people. The main reason for this . . . “old topic recycling”. Here’s what I mean, have you ever been taking part of a conversation, and as you finish up and the next person is taking their turn you have a brilliant thought to add about the topic being discussed? Then, before you get another chance to speak again, the group has moved onto another topic. Now you are stuck, do you let the brilliant insight pass or do you awkwardly go back to the old topic?
In a group with more than three people, you are stuck, you have to let it pass and save it for your roommate, partner, lover, significant other, dog . . . whatever really, and tell them about it once you get home, where it will have lost all possible chances of impressing anyone. In a group of three or fewer, you can get away with bringing the old topic, just as long and you remember to segue back to the new topic.
One of the things to remember is that regardless how well-equipped you are on conversational topics, there will always be topics that you are never prepared for, usually this equates to men only, and is centered around the subject of hygiene, feminine hygiene. Usually the second a man finds himself involved in a conversation that discusses key words like “cycle”, “flow”, any type of pad without a small i in front of it, and so on, the man will attempt to become the loud speaking chatter-box of any topic, but usually sport or the weather, just long enough get out of hearing range of the female hygiene conversation taking place.
Ladies, if you ever want a man to leave you alone, or if you simply want them to leave the room, or back away from you, so you can either talk about them or the other guys and don’t want any men listening in, this is a sure fire way to do just that.
It is also important to point out that a good memory can result in extreme creepiness in these types of situations. Case in point, years ago one of my best friends and I were visiting my brother in Jackson, and ran into a girl that we had met a few times about three years earlier. As we started talking to her, going though that whole, “Where do I know you from?” opening, she points at me and says, “You’re a Capricorn.” Then she pointed to my friend tells him he’s a Leo. She had no idea what our names were, but she remembered one of our conversations from years ago when she asked what our Zodiac signs were. We smiled, told her it was nice to see her again, and slowed backed away from the nice crazy lady.
If you are one of those people that remember random things about others, do not, I repeat, NOT, bring them up in social settings. It truly will weird people out. The only time this is acceptable is if you are dating/engaged to/married to someone the person. If you remember that your significant other smelled like vanilla the first time you met, it’s sweet and romantic. If you tell a coworker that who you have never talked to outside of work, or someone that you have not seem in six months or longer, yeah, everyone’s going to think you’re creepy . . . including yourself.
So, what are some of your trouble with groups?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: groups, group leader, person with idea, la la la I can’t hear you, and raised eyebrows.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Oct 31, 2011 | Holiday Banter, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Halloween is a holiday that I Smirk about each year. The first year I shared my experience about people dressing up for Halloween at work. Last year I did two pieces, the first one about the delight of youthful treat-or-treating leading to my first experience with Jehovah’s Witnesses and their incessant refusal to take part in the Halloween holiday. The second one was about passing out “healthy” alternatives to commercial treat-or-treat treats. I’m still not 100% sure I’m proud I did that, but this year to avoid becoming “that guy” again, I’ll be out of the house so I won’t be at home and waiting for decorated little people to come to my door step and threaten me using the well coded guise of “trick-or-treat” aka “give me candy or else”.
The thing is I’m not a big fan of Halloween . . . for myself. For other people sure, but I don’t like dressing up. I really haven’t since I was a teenager. That being said, I can’t help but notice the irony that while writing that I am dressed up in what could be considered a costume. For work today people can dress up, and since this holiday allows me to wear shorts and sandals to work for only one day of the year . . . I have chosen to do so. To top it off I’m wearing an oversized white button up shirt with some embroidered designs in it. So take that and add me slicking my hair back and putting it into a pony tail and wal la, I’m dressed up as a “Caribbean drug lord”, like you see on television. It might seem like a silly ruse to get away with wearing shorts to work, but you know what . . . I’m wearing shorts to work!
I am always willing to support those who love, crave, and live for Halloween, just don’t expect me to dress up, or want to dress up, or care when you are disappointed that I didn’t dress up for your party. It’s just not my thing, but at least I brought some wine to help you get over it.
For this year’s Halloween Smirk I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what Halloween really is, or at least was, and where it came from. Prior to researching this holiday all I could really tell you about it is that it was a Pagan holiday that was once called Hallow’s Eve and that it had something to do with warding off evil spirits. Let’s just say I was minutely correct, and that there is quite a bit of room for improvement.
Halloween was an ancient Celt festival called Samhain (pronounced sow-in or sow-an), which is from the old Irish word Samuin meaning “summer’s end”. Some 2000 years ago these Celts lived in the land what now makes up northern France, the United Kingdom and Ireland and according to their calendar November 1st was their New Year. The 1st was considered the end of summer and the harvest, and the start of the cold, dark winter days that brought with them, death.
It was believed that on the night of the 31st the ghosts of the dead would return to earth to cause trouble and damage crops. It was also believe that the spirits made it easier for Druids to commune with these spirits and make predictions about the upcoming year, giving mental security and direction during the winter months.
During the festival everyone in the community extinguished the fires in their homes and a huge bon fires were built as crops and animas were offered as sacrifices to the gods. During this time costumes were worn, usually made from animals (heads and skins) to fool the spirits into leaving them alone, and at the end of the celebration the people used flames from the bon fire to relight the fires in their own home, which would serve as protection during the winter months.
Eventually, the Christians showed up and went on a campaign to replace Halloween to All Saints Day, but Halloween has refused to go away. Sure it has altered a bit, and customs have been added along the way, like the jack-o’-lantern. This custom originated from Irish myth about a farmer named “Stingy Jack” who played a number of tricks on the devil, and ultimately when he died, no one wanted his soul. He was given a burning piece of coal, so Jack carved a small lantern out of a turnip, placed the coal inside and has been roaming the earth ever since.
In Ireland and Scotland people began to carve scary faces into turnips and potatoes (in England they used large beets) and placed them on in windows or near doors to frighten away Jack and other evil spirits. It wasn’t until immigrants from these countries came to America, bringing this tradition with them, that they found pumpkins were much easier to carve and made much better jack-o’-lanterns, hence the tradition that Jack-o’-lanterns are carved from pumpkins.
There is more, but I’m heading out soon, so I guess that’s it for this year, but in hopes of getting a holiday smirk from you, here are a few Halloweenish facts that I got from Kelley Rockey (with a few personal interjections).
- Samhainophobia is an intense, persistent, and abnormal fear of Halloween. (Where as an intense, persistent, and abnormal fear of phobias is called phobophobia. But what I want to know is what do you call a phobia of saying phobophobia?)
- The current world record for biggest pumpkin is *Phil who weighed 1,469 pounds (667.7 kg). (*I don’t know if they actually named the pumpkin Phil, but in my opinion Phil does make for a good pumpkin name.)
- After the Roman Empire gained control of the British Isles, Samhain also became a harvest festival honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees. Bobbing for apples is thought to have originated from this harvest festival. (The thing I’d like to know . . . when was the last time a sober person bobbed for apples?)
- 99% of pumpkins grown in America are used for Jack-o-lanterns. (Half of which, I imagine, go to the endless supply of pumpkin related carving shows on food themed cable television shows.)
- The number one candy choice for Halloween is Snickers. (Apparently it’s not as satisfying as they’d like us to believe.)
- In the United States the first citywide Halloween celebration was held in Anoka, Minnesota in 1921. It is believed that the reason the townspeople decided to put on this celebration was to divert its youngsters from committing Halloween pranks. Anoka is now known as “The Halloween Capital of the World”. (Granted this is a self-proclaimed title and no one except Anokaites refer to Anoka as “The Halloween Capital of the World”, but still, good for them.)
- Halloween is the 2nd most commercially successful holiday. Americans spend an estimated 6.9 billion dollars during Halloween on candies, costumes, decorations and parties. (Let’s just hope we don’t start seeing Halloween decorations on the shelves four months before the holiday . . . yeah I’m talking about you Christmas!)
- One quarter of all the candy sold in the United States each year is purchased for Halloween. (More impressive is that is only takes about three to four days for one quarter of all the candy sold in the United States each year to be consumed. See I told you Snickers are nearly as satisfying as they want you to believe.)
Well, that’s it for me. I hope you all enjoy your Halloween and a very Happy Samhain to you all!
And a big thanks to the History Channel and Wikipedia for educating me a bit more about Halloween.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: Halloween, holding wine bottle, Samhain, Stingy Jack, largest pumpkin, and Anoka MN.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Oct 27, 2011 | I Do Suggest, I Think There's a Point, Lightbulbs and Soapboxes, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
I hear people say all the time that lying is a bad thing. As a child I was taught that lying is wrong, not just wrong, but a sin. We even have laws that demand we not lie and if we are caught doing so we can go to jail, or get fined, or be subject to hours of community service, or all three. The thing is, when you get right down to it, there are plenty of lies that we don’t mind at all, and in some cases we enjoy them quite a lot. So for today’s Smirk, here are a few of those lies that I think we as people thoroughly enjoy.
Let’s start with the Tooth Fairy. Adults tell their kids that some mentally deranged tutu wearing waif with wings, who has an addiction to ivory in the shape of children’s teeth, breaks in to and enters their home while the family is sleeping, creeps into the child’s room and invades the kids personal space by reaching under the child’s pillow, while their sleeping head is on it!, to find a freshly removed tooth. The only thing the keeps her from being a prosecuted is the fact that, apart from being fictional, she leaves a little coin under your pillow in exchange for the tooth, instead of outright stealing it.
Still, when you hear this lie as a kid, you are elated that some fairy is going to be paying you a special visit during the night to pick up your discarded tooth and leave you some cash in its place. You know, if you stop and think about it, the Tooth Fairy is a lot like garbage man. However, in this day and age I think the PC job description would be a door-to-door ivory disposal engineer. The thing I loved about this lie was the reward I got for playing an active role in it. When I lost a tooth I always placed it under my pillow, looking forward to the monetary reward I would be getting for losing it in the first place. Although, now that I think about it, it does kind of teach kids that it’s alright to sell your body parts . . . the more I think about this lady the creepier she gets.
The cash I got from the Tooth Fairy did turn into a bit of a vicious cycle. I always used my Tooth Fairy money to buy more candy so I could lose more teeth to get more money to get more candy. The Tooth Fairy was one of my few money making venues as a kid. If I wanted candy my options for making money so I could get some was teeth (25 cents each), a lemonade stand (10 cents a glass), my weekly allowance (1 dollar), searching the couch for loose change (this varied anywhere from 1 cent to a record $1.87), and birthdays (I could always count on my grandparents giving me a 5 dollar bill each year. Due to these limited money making opportunities I once, and I’m not proud of this, took my little sister’s tooth from under her pillow while she slept and put it under my own pillow in hopes of cashing in on her lost tooth . . . it didn’t work, and I got grounded.
Next we have the over-sized, self-aware, ultra-soft, cuddly woodland creature that has a hide and seek fetish for baskets full of treats and dyed hard boiled eggs. Not to mention, thanks to Cadbury, it is believed that this bunny has the magical power to excrete chocolate eggs.
Side note: Thanks to the marketing campaign of Cadbury every Easter, I do always get a cheap laugh when I purchase my one Cadbury Creme Egg for the year and then, while eating it in front of my friends, mention once or twice, “I’ve really got to stop eating this crap.”
I loved this lie as a kid! The idea of a giant bunny sneaking into my house once a year to expel chocolate all over the place and then steal all the eggs we dyed the night before only to hide them throughout the house, was not only a vast source of youthful entertainment, but it was a wonderful exercise in imagination. It resulted in me asking questions such as, “If I was a bunny, where would I hide an Easter basket?” Plus, if you were like me and not that proficient at finding all of the stashes of chocolate droppings around the house there was always the chance of finding a lost stash of chocolate a few weeks after finishing the last bits of my Easter candy.
One lie that initially carried with it a great deal of disappointment was the lie about lying. No, not the “you should never lie” lie, but the one about the spontaneous combustion that occurs to one’s britches when a lie is told. Seriously, the first time I caught someone lying to me I was more disappointed that their pants did not burst into flames than I was about the fact that I caught them lying to me. This was a lie I did not appreciate as a kid, but as an adult who tells this lie to children, it is a true delight. The most rewarding part is watching them try to comprehend the cause and effect dynamic that they are pretty sure is flawed, but they don’t want to test it out, just in case their pants catch fire.
The list of acceptable lies goes on and on, Santa being one of the biggest, not just by body mass, but by the reaction people had on it once they found out . . . a Smirk I am saving for the holidays.
If you are still leery of this “liking lies” concept there is one lie we all love to be a part of. The “It’s not sour” lie associated for all things sour. We lie all the time about things not being sour when we know for a fact they are. The sole purpose for this is to get the person we are lying to, usually a child, to put something extremely sour in their mouth unbeknownst to them. Then we wait with high anticipation for the lie to pay off when the kid’s taste buds register they are eating something sour and their face uncontrollably distorts in to a wide array of visual hilarity. In short, we lie to people about sour food so they will eat it and make funny faces that make us laugh.
An entire room of adults will take an active role in this lie just so they can all laugh at the faces a five year old makes when they eat a lemon. If you get me anywhere near a baby and a kitchen at the same time, you can bet at some point I am going to be coaxing the little whippersnapper to sample a lemon wedge. And you know what? No one stops me. Know why? They, just like me, can’t wait to see and laugh at the infant’s reaction. The “sour lie” has been going on for generations, and I think as long as humans continue to have kids they are going to be lying to those kids about something tasting sour, all for the sake of laughing at their reaction to an unexpected flavor. It’s a lie that we all love to share.
So, what are some of your favorite happy lies?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: lying, kids pulling teeth, Cadbury Creme Egg, pants on fire, and eating sour lemon.
© Richard Timothy 2011
Plus, the memory stick looks almost brand new. All the old smudges are completely gone. I think I might get a new memory stick for my birthday though. I think the old one has earned its retirement and should be placed into my storage drawer of nostalgia. Plus, I finally got around to getting all of my writing safely stored in four new and more permanent locations, so I can now check that off my “to do” list too. I wouldn’t recommend anyone do this, ever, but in my case, I actually worked out for the best, which is definitely a Smirk worth sharing.
