one thing i constantly notice, time and time again, not only in conversations i have with people myself, but also other people's that i overhear, is the amount of things that people say that are sometimes very hard to believe.
i have one friend who is particularly good at this and has it almost down to a fine art, to anyone who doesn't know them well enough that is. it always seemed that this friend always had an uncanny story or amazing tale to tell every time i saw them. at first i believed it all, as anyone would, but as time went on and i got better at reading this person, i was able to, more and more, see through their seemingly 'true' stories. it's not as if they would tell stories of leaping between buildings and saving old women from burning car wrecks, it was more the typical "I saw such and such from that tv show today" kind of mumbo jumbo. the only difference was, was that these tales happened every day and time i saw this person and seemed as though they were being tailored to my interests.
i'm not kidding anyone, i too figured out the art of tailoring stories to suit an audience when i was younger. everyone goes through a childhood conversation where they realize that by 'jazzing' up their story their audience will think they're 'cooler'. i think some people just don't grow out of it. they then become guilty of plain lieing, instead of childhood white lies and it becomes a disgusting habit. just like smoking, but without the tobacco, paper....well, you get it.
sometimes with his person i even found my own tales that i had told months before were being regurgitated back at me with a slightly different twist. of course i couldn't say anything, that would of made it just too awkward, even if there were times when i really wanted to set them straight for once.
in a weird way i knew what was being done to me, whether or not this was a good or bad thing, and yet allowed it to continue, and still do. i probably do this because the person's stories act as a catalyst for me to make more conversation with that person and i find it easier to allow them to begin with a tale of absolute crap than asking them what they had for lunch. another reason i guess is because i can tell behind those tales of situations far and beyond, is a person who is actually quite insecure, and if i'm able to make them feel that little bit better about themselves just by my expressions of "wow" and "really?!", then, what the heck. but that could be just me being soft.
it seems like this is a very typical new zealand past time. a lot of kiwi's seem to indulge in this dressing-up-of-personal-stories saga and perhaps it points more to the fact that because we are quite modest and seem talk ourselves down a lot (another story in itself), we need moments where we can do the opposite, and feel a bit excited inside knowing that someone is being woo-ed by our story telling efforts, true or not.
think about that next time your BFF is telling you about how they saw Cheryl from Outrageous Fortune at the friday night drags.
x
No comments:
Post a Comment