Have you ever found yourself flipping through a family photo album, finding a picture of yourself at an impossibly early age in a curious position, and exclaimed to your sister or brother, "Oh, shit! I remember that!", at which point you begin to assemble the details and circumstances surrounding it. The memory is very strong, and you seem to have an almost preternatural ability to recall where and why the photo was taken.
When your sister points out that you were about 1 and a half years old, and pretty unable to form such detailed memories, you realize suddenly that this memory is almost entirely fabricated, assembled from stories you've been told upon seeing this photo a handful of times in the photo album as you've been growing up. Your memory is a lie. Or is it?
I've spent nearly my entire life embellishing, aggrandizing, or otherwise completely fabricating episodes and incidents in my life. I realized early on that the events of my life, while personally entertaining, couldn't hold an audience. So I started including one-liners and comebacks that occurred to me long after the incident or conflict.
Me:"So there's this hippie selling shitty hemp bracelets on the corner, and she hollers at me, 'Hey, want to buy a bracelet, they're all handmade!' So I turn to her and laugh, saying, 'Yes, ma'am, I'm quite certain they are,' and continue walking."
Friend I'm relating story to: "Then what did she say?"
Me: ""umm...Nothing"
Thus began a slippery slope of white lies and self-delusion.
Now, certainly, I can't pretend that I would be able to debunk any of the myths I've disseminated; I've been making up details and putting words in my and other's mouths for so long that I don't know where the truth ends and the stories begin. It is my intention, however, to relate some of the personal legends from my past, and to unabashedly generate fresh ones as soon as the seed is planted.
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