The Truth, The Partial Truth, And Nothing But The Nice Part Of The Truth

I've offered numerous accounts of my nighttime exploits here, and it has made me think about the way truth is shaped and framed when told by one person to another. The re-telling is never completely faithful, and there are any number of reasons why one would want to diverge from total fidelity to real events, or feel compelled to. They mostly have to do with regard for the manner in which certain people will react (often, law enforcement included).

It didn't used to be so complicated to tell stories about myself and my friends. For one thing, there were fewer friends (none of whom had matured enough to have a dark side) and often there were no friends at all. When there were friends, our stories were of a very harmless nature, and there was nothing one would think to omit out of delicacy- only out of disinterest. Once I got to college age, there started to be certain things I would tell ruefully. Later the rueful things started to loom larger, and the gladly-shared details were replaced by ones I preferred to keep to myself except in the event of being subpoenaed by a grand jury. That hasn't happened yet.

One thing I haven't really had to do is to figure out how to tell what happened the night before to someone who was there and doesn't remember it. That seems to be something that happens a lot in soap operas and raunchy film comedies. Maybe I've come close to that, but it never seems to be as interesting or exciting as in the examples I gave- just mundane stuff forgotten more due to elapsed time or a lot of things happening at once, and not really due to narcotics. Of course, I guess none of those things really can be forgotten anymore. Where there's a camera and an internet connection, there's an evening spent among friends which is later disseminated to the entire world, like it or lump it. Sometimes I lump it. There will be a rather lively party, and after you get home, you just wait for the other shoe to drop: an album of photos on Facebook.

I'd like to not ever have to worry about framing the truth, but with my busy lifestyle, that seems unlikely. I wonder if hermits out in the woods have to be careful about how they tell the fish in the lake what happened at the bear's birthday party. Actually, come to think of it, that sounds like it would be a much more awkward story than any I've told or left untold so far.