I am not a liar by nature. However, I was raised in the deepest of the Deep South tradition where tall tales were welcomed, not fact-checked, and were graded on their entertainment value. This was the same era and place where one’s reputation could be staked on a handshake deal to buy a car, or seal a mortgage. An odd mix of strict honesty and outrageous fiction. Through subtle clues, everyone knew when a story was veering into a yarn, fish story, practical joke, April Fools shenanigan or leg-pulling. The internet, however, does not allow the same clues for that transition. No “Did you hear the one about . . .” or “Let me tell you whut . . .” or “My fish was sooo big . . .” I have gotten crossed up a few times with written fiction that lacked veracity. Here are a couple of examples:
Firstly, I wrote a fictitious and prosaic piece about paddling out to a Park Island to sit in a watering trough while wild bison drank from the trough. It won a small award in the FICTION category. Someone took it literally and tried to duplicate the fictitious trip. They ran into nine kinds of trouble from access to capsized canoes etc.
Then later I accidentally caused a community crisis by a polite (and fictitious) telling in a coffee shop newspaper in rural Utah. Now mind you, Utah is known as the scam capital of the US because the dominant religion of Latter Day Saints, requires and trains members to believe some things that stretch credibility with non-Mormons. Additionally is it poor LDS form to question authority. Seemingly, if it is in print, it carried a high degree of authority and veracity. My story was about a group of Algerian immigrants in rural Utah. My friend, their 22-year-old son, was a dark and very hirsute young man who though always well-shaved and neatly coiffed, still had a mysterious hairline just below his belt line. I asked him about it and he said he had to use a “fire break” to prevent burning all his abundant back hair off. It seems he would wet a rag and pass it over his upper buttocks before gingerly passing a simple Bic lighter through the crack of his well-dried nether regions. This was a painless, simpler and quicker form of depilatory than trying to shave places where the sun had never shined. However, such was the forest of hair therein, that once lit, it could spread a flickering uphill flame and give a singeing. He needed to make sure the flashing flames didn’t get past his waist, thus, the damp firebreak. Very ingenious. The problem was, it was false and the readers didn’t catch that part.
The local 7-ll mysteriously sold out of Bic lighters that week, and reports of burns came trickling back to me “ Heyyyy . . . that DOES NOT WORK!”. Well, of course not, it was a fictitious story and I am sorry I burned your asses!
My little brother caused a big stir in his outdoor-based non-profit organization by writing a memo on letterhead complimenting the US Forest Service’s new trail designations of certain trails for LBGTQ2S*-only participants. The signage, the rangers on patrol, and the privacy provided from the rest of the public was there to provide a safer, more relaxing vacation hike for others sharing in the acronym. Thinking it a large enough tip off, he issued this letter to all employees emphasizing in the last line that this would come into effect on 1 April. It seems that a lot of people had their minds made up on the utter wrongness of this by the end of the first paragraph and didn’t bother to read to the end before starting the calls to his boss, writing rebuttals, contacting the Forest Service directly, and just generally running in circles with their hair on fire (should have used a fire break!). He had to work hard to walk that prank back.
I guess we come by it honestly though. My father, who was one of the straighter shooters I have ever known — a 32 year sitting judge, war hero, community leader whose nickname was “Saint George” — was the antithesis of a liar. He did not consider practical jokes to be lies however. Thus, he was not above waking all of his seven children and wife in a panic to tell them that the town’s watertower had burst. Our only salvation from drowning was to make a run for it. We had to jump in the car while wearing our pajamas to escape the wall of flood waters coming our way. Nobody did the math that we lived a mile from a small water tower containing about a swimming pool’s worth of water. Lots of screaming and fear for our lives as he cranked over the car engine that, conveniently would not start because he had removed the distributor cap. Then he calmly asked my mother the date of the day. She said 1 April, why do you as . . . “ followed by her trademark expletive “Dammittohell!” And she spent the next 20 minutes calming crying children as he drove us to the doughnut shop for breakfast. That was like praising a dog for stealing the Christmas ham.
Practical jokes and creatively ridiculing reality were baked into our psyches from an early age. Consequently, handshake buzzers, invisible ink, plastic ice cubes, and small explosives one could insert into a cigarette made their way into our house during the grade school years. Later, as high schoolers we dialed up our game. An M-80 firecracker in the city centre’s water drain pipes would make a canon-like roar for 10 city blocks; an innocent placement of a stink bomb near a school’s fresh air ventilation intake would cause the school to evacuate, and; a potato wedged onto a police cruiser’s exhaust pipe would make a wonderful pistol-like pop when they started their engine. None of the Foote teenaged boys fessed up to such pranks that verged on, but didn’t quite reach criminal status.
Things could backfire too. I was an “active” child, occasionally breaking a bone, chipping a tooth, or splitting my chin open. These were absorbed as evidence of a life well-lived and in keeping with the family mantra “Complete freedom short of instantaneous death”. Maybe with seven kids, three of which were obviously accidents, they figured they could lose a couple and improve their retirement.
Well, I over-stepped. When my sister brought home an intact cow’s eyeball from her high school science class for dissection practice, I borrowed it. I just held it in my palm like a raw egg, covered my left eye and ran into the kitchen where my mom was drinking coffee . . . “Mom, I pulled my eyeball out!” . I was unsure what to do as she slid from her chair onto the floor in a dead assed faint. Next thing I knew, she was up and animatedly chasing me around while waving a fly swatter as she attempted to tan my hide. It wasn’t funny for at least a year.
My Christmas wish for each of you — may you have fun in the zone of the supra-factual and be blessed with active children with unbridled imaginations.
