When the imagination becomes truth!

R. Paradon

New Member
I will guess that most of us are really seniors here ~ in age, anyway! One of my friends is about six months older than me and I have noticed that often he will repeat some of the stories of his life and that is fine because they are usually entertaining.

One thing I have noticed is that as the years go bye, his stories change quite a bit! Now I am wondering if I do the same thing! I know that it is fun to exaggerate to make a story more fun but when the whole concept changes....

Any of you experiencing this with either your friends or yourself?
 

I noticed that with people I use to work with for a long time. They weren't even elderly, but I would notice that the details of their repeated tales did tend to change over time. Never mentioned it to them though, really didn't matter much, figured it might have been the way they were remembering it.

I know sometimes I would tell a person something, and they said that I already told them. Usually that happened when I had told the same thing to several people, and had forgotten that I already told that person. That's also happened with me, where I had to tell someone, before they took the trouble of repeating the whole story, that they already told me. Confused yet? :p
 
I've been known to squash a spider on Monday and by Friday the local TV stations are broadcasting my valient and victorious battle against Cthulhu.

cthulhu6_s.jpg

I tend to get carried away when I have an audience, probably because of my dashed dreams of being a stand-up comic (clinically flat feet). Years ago when my boys were young we were driving past a rocky outcropping in the middle of winter. The ice had all frozen after running down the rocks, but it was the color that drew the boys' attention - the ice was all colors of the rainbow!

They "ooh"ed and "ahh"ed for a while and asked me what caused it. Of course, I knew the local teens were famous for adding large bunches of watercolors and dyes to the ice, but that would hardly do as an explanation.

Hence, my creation of "The Flugglehoffer Effect".

... had 'em going for years. ;)
 

All I know is that the older my siblings and I get, the more we tend to remember different past events or remember different things that happen when we were growing up or at a family reunion. And sometimes, my uncles and aunts have shared with me stories that I know I don't remember.[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif] So, whether or not, they used their imagination, I would not know.[/FONT] My parents have now passed away and so, we are the ones left to pass on our family history and our family stories.

One of my uncles just recently shared with me about what my dad had told him happened on one of our family camping trips. I was just a child and somehow, I don't remember the situation that my uncle described to me, which he said my dad had told him, so many years ago.

According to my uncle, my dad told him about a situation that happened one night, when we had camped along the beach. My parents, being wise and knew how to recognize the high tide line, pitched our family tent well above the high tide line. In the middle of the night, my dad awoke to the shouting and yelling of the occupants in a tent near by. It had been pitched below the high tide line, and guess what, it was now high tide. My dad had to yell at them to watch their language and told them that were young children sleeping in his tent, and he didn't want his young children waking up to such 'expressive' language. Perhaps I never heard about this story because I was asleep. M dad never told me nor my siblings about how those college students were expressing themselves, as their tent was filling up in high tide with gentle ocean waves. Perhaps, my uncle thought I am now old enough to hear about this family camping trip story.

All I remember is the next morning, my dad pointing to their flatten and wet tent and telling us to stay away from the occupants of that tent, who were sleeping in their wet sleeping bags, behind their tent - but well above the high tide line. He told us what happened (but left out that he had yelled at them or that they were cursing) so that we would not have to learn this lesson the hard way. I also remember on that morning, my dad expressed no sympathy for these college kids. He figured if they had made it to college (as he never went to college) then they should be knowledgeable enough to know what a high tide line is and on which side to pitch their tent.

I had completely forgot about that morning on that camping trip until my uncle related this 'expressive' story. Knowing my dad, (he just recently passed away) I can imagine that (woken up in the middle of the night) he probably cursed at the college kids in order to get them to stop cursing. But he was a kind soul and probably didn't really want them to drown, so I imagine it was him who told them where they should take their sleeping bags (above the high tide line) so they could all get back to sleep.
 
Cool stories and experiences! Thanks to everybody! I am happy to know it is not only me experiencing this phenomenon! My mother (full German lady and not very funny when she was young) told me this story of her and my aunt Violet. She took a good 15 or 20 minutes and my older brother and I were spellbound. Here is a shortened version.

"I used to have a beautiful diamond ring when I was in my late teens. It was my most prized possession and was given to me by mother. So many times, your aunt Violet kept on asking me to borrow it and I would always refuse. One day I finally gave in and let her borrow it. Some hours later she came back crying and told me that she had a date at Coney Island (amusement park by the sea) and when she was walking on the pier she was admiring the ring and it fell into the ocean! I was furious and would not talk to your aunt for years, but as we got older I did forgive her. One afternoon, it must have been fifteen or so years later, we decided to try our luck fishing off that same pier. Neither of us really knew what we were doing but all at once I had a fish on the line and when I reeled him in it was so exciting. When we got home and opened the fish up, you will never believe what we found inside! Baloney, like the rest of this story!"

I think that was the only humorous story she knew and as the years went on I heard it several more times!
 
My mother is now in her 80's.......when she talks about the time when we were growing up.......it sounds like a very interesting "novel"....? I am amazed at how far from the "facts" she has gotten? How could it even be possible that we both remember such completely different versions? I have concluded that ONE of us is either "delusional" or a total liar? :confused:
 


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