Stories That Ain't True

Over the years I developed a series of routines, comedy pieces I would spin out to entertain and amuse… me. They were often dropped into the middle of conversations or as distractions within an otherwise free-flowing lecture. Unfortunately, tossing them off in deadpan style often created the sense that I actually lived these experiences and that I was either:

A) Terribly weird.
B) Delusional (a subset of A.)
C) A bare-faced liar.
D) A pig.

To some, I may have been a combination of any or all the above.

So, to clarify the matter, these stories ain’t true:

“I moved into an apartment that was converted from an old hotel. While setting up my things, I opened a kitchen cabinet and discovered a medicine bottle stuffed with all kinds of pills. Blue, green, yellow, red, two-toned, some round and most of them capsules. There were maybe 50-60 pills in that bottle. I guess I could have sold them, but I decided to just flush them down the toilet. A few days later, I was reading when I heard a small tap-tap-tap on my door. I opened it. There was nobody there. Then I looked down and I saw a rat shaking horribly, clutching itself like it was going to fly apart. He saw me looking, licked his lips and yelled ‘Gimme more drugs, man!’”

“I hated doing laundry. I hated going to the laundromat with its dead air, funky smells and aura of gloom. I hated sorting the clothes, getting change, washers that didn’t wash, dryers that didn’t dry or that roasted your clothes, seeing people I wouldn’t want to be caught dead with and then lugging the whole mess of laundry back. I hated it all. So instead of doing laundry every week, I started stretching it out to every two weeks. That got old quickly, so I stretched it to once a month, then every two months. At that point, to find clothes I could wear, I’d just throw them against the wall. Whatever didn’t stick, I could wear again. When all of it stuck, I’d throw it against the ceiling and wear whatever came down during the night. When I had nothing to wear and couldn’t chip the stuff off the ceiling, I’d move to a new apartment and buy new clothes.”

“The problem with admitting a weakness is that your friends are usually the first ones to use it against you. Because of a childhood pre-operation diet, I developed a loathing of Jell-O. Couldn’t stand the stuff. So of course, on my birthday, what did these f(r)iends get me? A case of Jell-O. Assorted flavors! A tidy bundle of 48 little boxes of gastronomic sludge. I put the box in my kitchen and forgot about it. Until one day I realized that 48 little boxes of gelatin need a lot of hot water and that unless you have some cannibal’s stewpot, you only have one choice for that big a batch: the bathtub. Filled halfway with hot water and with the multi-colored Jell-O contents poured in, I had me a reddish purple sloshing mass that just begged to be tested. I learned three things: Sitting in a tub full of Jell-O is not as fun as it sounds. Jell-O has a way of creeping into crevices that you will not like. And finally, that it takes hours to clean the gunk off your skin and you can write off the bathtub as a loss.”

Well, actually, that last one is true. Don’t tell anyone.