Day: September 11, 2017

Back Where I Come From — Playing Catch-up

Fandango15 Comments

Suzanne McClendon’s September Challenge is comprised of 30 questions (one per day) regarding your background and history. As an anonymous blogger, I didn’t think I wanted to participate because I thought the questions were somewhat intrusive.

However, after seeing a few other bloggers participating in this challenge and reading their posts, I thought it was fun to learn about of their backgrounds.

But I figured it’s already one-third of the way through the month and I’ve not responded to any of the prompts, so I missed the proverbial boat. Besides, no one cares where I came from.

Then I thought why not? So today I’m going to play catch-up and respond to the first 11 “somewhat intrusive” questions in a single post. Ready?

Day 1: Were you raised in the town in which you were born? Where were you raised?

No, I was born in a Boston suburb, but was raised in the DC area.

Day 2: Were either of your parents raised in your hometown? If not, how did they end up there?

No. My parents were both immigrants who came to the US as young adults. We moved to the DC area from Massachusetts when my father took a job there. I was five.

Day 3: Were you raised in a town/city or in a rural area? Do you live in the same type of place now?

I’ve always lived in or near relatively large cities, as I do now.

Day 4: What were your hobbies as you were growing up?

Collecting baseball cards and comic books, playing baseball, riding my bicycle, and hanging out with my buddies.

Day 5: Where did all the kids “hang” in your hometown?

The mall, of course. Or the recreation center. Or the bowling alley. Or the car hop area at the local Hot Shoppes restaurant. Or the community pool during the summers.

Day 6: Did your town have a river running through or near it? What was its name?

The Potomac River.

Day 7: Did you ever participate in creating graffiti or any type of artwork that would have been confrontational?

I was a doodler. I would often doodle caricatures of my fellow students or teachers. It was only confrontational when I got caught doodling by my teachers, particularly if any of my doodles were of the teachers who caught me.

Day 8: How old were you when you took your first drink of alcohol, if you ever have? What were the circumstances surrounding that moment?

I was probably about 8 or 9. My parents had gone out with a couple from out of town who were visiting us and one of their kids was an older girl about 12 years old. After our parents left the house, she suggested that we taste some of the wine that my parents kept in their dining room buffet. We did. And the two of us got quite snockered after polishing off almost the entire bottle of wine. My parents were not happy about it.

Day 9: Do you plan to move back to your hometown area in your older years? Why or why not?

Nope. If anything, I’ll move to an isolated spot near the ocean where I can sit on my porch and listen to the surf breaking on the rocks.

Day 10: How do you feel about the place that you came from?

The DC area? I now associate DC with politics, hypocrisy, dysfunction, and dishonesty. That said, it is a beautiful city.

Day 11: Were there a lot of churches in your hometown? What about where you live now?

Not nearly as many as there are where I live now. There are more churches than there are Starbucks around here. By an order of magnitude.

Okay, I’m going to try to keep up with Suzanne’s September Challenge prompt going forward. See you tomorrow for Day 12.

Just a Little Exaggeration

Fandango19 Comments

Do you ever exaggerate when telling a story or writing a post? Do you add an embellishment here or there for the sake of the narrative, to help your readers relate, or to gain their sympathy?

When someone exaggerates, they are representing something (or someone) as being larger, greater, better, or worse than it (or he or she) really is.

Don’t most good storytellers exaggerate a little? They embellish their tales, perhaps in order to heighten the story’s interest or to make the deeds described within seem just a bit more dramatic, heroic, or comedic.

And, of course, comedians make use of exaggeration, amplification, and hyperbole to enhance the humor of their jokes and funny stories.

An exaggeration occurs when the most fundamental aspects of a statement are true, but only to a certain degree. It’s just “stretching the truth” a little, right?

For example, when a mother scolds her child and says, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times…” is that simply an exaggeration or is it a lie? After all, she may have told her kid that a lot, but certainly not a million times.

How about “I’m so hungry that I could eat a horse”? Or “You could have knocked me over with a feather”? Are these common idioms examples of exaggeration, hyperbole, or lies? Do we recognize and accept them because of how obvious it is that these are “exaggerations for effect”?

A fine line

But isn’t stretching the truth also lying and being dishonest? I think we can all agree that there is a fine line between exaggeration and lying. But if that’s the case, where does it fall and under what circumstances should it not be crossed?

I’ve heard some suggest that the difference between an exaggeration and a lie is that the former doesn’t cause any harm, whereas the latter does. Others say the difference between the two is that an exaggeration could be seen as a matter of interpretation of facts. A lie, though, is a deception with the intention to mislead.

It is, indeed, a slippery slope when trying to distinguish between a benign exaggeration and an outright lie.

As a blogger and a storyteller, what are your feelings about exaggeration? Do you equate adding embellishments to your posts to lying? When, if ever, is stretching the truth permissible?