The lesson today with respect to fabricating personal mishaps from whole cloth, weaving them into bold political statements, is to leave a few extraneous ideas on the sewing room floor. The fewer lies you have to remember the better. I think Lincoln said that. A detail or two helps, but that’s it. Any more and people will start to wonder just why your memory was so good during such a traumatic event.
Say I’m running late to the office one frosty morning and instead of pinging my boss, alerting him to this sad fact, I decide instead to hoax it up. It’s been done before and it will surely be done again. I tell him that just as I stepped outside to walk to the subway, a duo of miscreants attacked me, yelling derisive terms about advertising copywriters and people with long hair. One of the bad men called me “Bill Bernhack” while the other poured ink from a ballpoint pen into my scalp. The message was clear – there’s no room for pens in a world with word processors. They proceeded to pummel me with an ancient fax machine, analogizing my utility with this once piece of valuable technology.
My boss wasn’t buying it. I got greedy, he said. I decided for one too many details. He was particularly puzzled by the decision to mark my entire body with highlighter (highlighting the “good parts” as my assailants might say).
I was a gilding of the lily situation. A practice I take very seriously. First, you need to identify said lily, then take it to your friendly, neighborhood gilder. Use it as a boutonnière or a Christmas ornament. Your call.
No comments:
Post a Comment