25 Random Lies About Me, issue one

As previously advertised, here are the 25 Random Lies About Me, presented as a serial.


1. Because I’m not good at physics, I’ve never built a time machine. My friend Phil Harrington built one on a whim one weekend in college.





After drinking too much I decided to try it out. As per the cliché, I thought I’d go back to kill Hitler.



I decided to go back to when he was a sixth grader, not because I like killing kids, but because that year he happened to be in the same school as the future great philosopher Wittgenstein, and I thought I could have a talk with him after offing the future dictator.



Unfortunately, I forgot that time machines do not also move a person through space, so I spent a cold night in Spokane in the year 1911, then came back to the present and slept it off.

25 Random Lies About Me, issue zero

You may have heard of this viral phenomenon on Facebook, the "25 Random Things About Me." If you don't Facebook (is that a verb yet?) then you might have been spared. You get a notice that a friend has tagged you (read: notified/obligated) with their own list. The note begins with a stock paragraph:

"Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you."

Like how it has all that authority at the beginning? RULES! Then it ends with that desperate plea for more information. I mean, these are coming from people who are already your friends. Who can say, "Screw you, buddy! I don't want you to know any more about me."

But here's the thing; what if there isn't any more to know? My life hasn't been entirely boring. I've lives in a handful of places and had a few rare experiences. But 25? I don't think so. And the few I have had, I've told and retold to friends so many times that my wife, Paige, has heard all the stories a million times and has to kindly remind me when I'm telling them to another friend for the third or fourth time. Plus, I'm a blabber-mouth, for Blog-sake!

Feeling obligated to accomplish a herculean task, I found a solution when my mom sent me her list. Her final entry read: "I like to read fiction." I thought, well, I like to write fiction, so that could be my first one. And then it dawned on me; after that first entry, why not write 24 examples of things which never actually happened to me.

It sounded fun (and it was) but it took forever. Coming up with 24 spontaneous stories of things I've never actually done proved to be more difficult than I intially guessed. It took me three or four sittings, and in between I found myself making little notes during work about other possible lies I could tell about my life. Then, after all that, I went to post it and discovered that, true to the post's initial paragraph, you can ONLY send it to 25 people. I mean, these are my friends and family! They already know I'm a dork. What's the point if I can't make that clear to the whole world, right?

So I think I'll post them here, as a serial. "25 Random Lies About Me." I'm not a big fan of the term "random", probably because people beat it to death my freshmen year of college, but maybe it's essential to the viral success of the lists, so I'll reluctantly acquiesce. Stay tuned (does one tune in to a blog? Stay posted? No, I'm the one who posts. Stay WiFi connected? Webbed? Interneted?)...