Any of you ever played two truths and a lie? It’s one of those silly party games- basically, a person tells three anecdotes about themselves. One of them is a lie. Hence the title. Merriment is had by the other participants trying to guess which one is the lie, ideally with extensive commentary as to how likely each option is. Go round the circle, repeat ad nauseaum.
Since this is the SDMB, I’m expecting nothing but high-quality stuff here. I’ll go first.
I have a habit of going around and yelling “Arr” like a pirate. I do this to such an extent that several friends and I will do the pirate greeting (raise fist, yell “arr”) to each other as soon as we are within eyeshot of one another.
This all started, as so many things do, in France. When I was living in Lyon my mother watched children for a living, and I would come home in the afternoons and play with them. They particularly liked it when I drew them things- I’m not very good at drawing, but they didn’t care. Gaspard was always particularly thrilled at drawing, and he would always ask for me to draw him a big pirate ship. He’d then demand that I decorate it with (insert French words that I didn’t understand) and give me that patented “stupid american” look that the French do so well. That, however, is a whole different story. So anyway, we would always end up going around the basement of the house yelling “Je suis une grande pirate! Arr!” And that’s how it all started.
When I was in 7th grade I dated this boy named Bobby. We were both in the band; he played trumpet and I played the drums. Very early on in our relationship, the marching band played a parade in Ocean City. Afterwards we were free to wander the town as we pleased- there are lots of vendors and carnival rides there; it’s your standard beach town. With much oooh-ing and teasing from our friends, we decided to ride the carousel. It stopped at the very top of the circle. It was a beautiful day- we could see for miles out on the ocean as well as up and down the boardwalk. We turned to each other and kissed for the first time. Then he tried to put his arm around me and elbowed me in the eye.
My freshman year I lived in a dorm cluster called “The River”, as it is situated right by the river that is the border of VT and NH. One night in fall quarter a few of my friends and I went skinny dipping. At one point we noticed two other students, a guy and a girl, watching us from the bank. We all stopped dead in the water and watched them for a few seconds. Then the girl said, “Just so you all know, skinny dipping isn’t illegal in Vermont, so if Safety and Security or the police ever catch you just swim across the river and they can’t do anything.”
I haven’t skinny-dipped since, but if I do I’m going to walk over the bridge and put my clothes on the other side. Just in case.
So that’s why you became a lesbian
Hm… well, this is more tough than it seems. I’m pretty sure you didn’t grow up in France, so the “mother” you’re talking about is a host mother (if you mean your actual mother, than I call this one the lie). Still, it seems kind of unlikely that you’ve got all your friends carrying on in pirate-like fashion mere months after your trip overseas. I think, though, that this one is true.
As for the “one time, on a band trip…” story, well, I do know that you elbowed me in the eye when I tried to kiss you, so this one has also got to be true.
So we come to story three, a sordid tale of nudity across state lines and water sports. This must be the false one for many reasons. First, I can tell you that the police have arrested me many times for swimming nude here in VT (they even forbade me to return to the YMCA ever after), so you’ve got your story wrong there. Also, I find it hard to believe that in the fall semester of your freshman year you’d go skinny dipping with your new friends, especially as up here in the Northeast the water gets pretty cold for swimming pretty quick, which gives you really less than a month of swimmable weather (phew, talk about a run on sentence).
Therefore, I proclaim #3 to be false! Bow down before my powers of deduction!
Whoops, sorry, brain no function good tonight. Let me see…
While in the army during a Field Training Exercise, I was training to “tactically” park my hummer in between two trees. The purpose was to set up an AA with the trucks camoflagued. While guiding me with hand signals, my NCO became distracted by a bee which he was trying to swat. I didn’t realize what was going on and I thought he was motioning me forward. I kept inching dangerously close to him but I figured he knew what he was doing. All of a sudden, in an effort to get away from the bee, he lurched forward towards my hummer, was hit the chest by the brush guard and knocked down under the truck. Because of the high clearance of the hummers he wasn’t hurt but I was pulling extra guard every night for the remainder of the FTX.
2)When I was younger there was a stupid little thing called Presto Magic. They were kind of like stickers that you would place on a background but you would have to rub the stickers on. The old-timers know what I am talking about. Anyway, on a trip to the grocery store one day, my mom bought myself and my sister each a Presto Magic. While in the car on the way home, my sister decided she liked my Presto Magic theme better and decided to take it from me. We wrestled around for a bit and I was able to shove her head out the open window and roll the window up trapping her there. Mom didn’t realize this until a cop pulled her over to notify her that her daughter’s head was sticking out the window.
3)While visiting family in Puerto Rico my cousin and I wondered off through a heavily wooded area. We got lost and didn’t know where we were. We finally came to a clearing and hopped a fence hoping it the pasture was near a drivaway or main road. As we were walking, we heard a noise behind us. We turned around to see an angry bull running towards us. My cousin and I took off. The pasture was on a mountainside and we were running on the edge of a cliff with about a 30 foot drop. As we were trying to get away from the bull I tripped and started sliding down the face of the cliff about 10 feet. I managed to grab a root sticking out and held on for dear life. My cousin kept on running. About 30 minutes later, as I was making my peace with God and getting ready to die, my cousin returned with a few of my family members and the owner of the pasture. They lowered some rope and pulled me up to safety.
Okay, Amp, let’s see…
My BS-senses started tingling at number 3, but since you know that we’d be thinking that, you’d have that one truthful just to throw us off the scent.
I can easily see number 2 happening. Siblings can be a pain, and parents will just say “stop it” without looking back until the blood splashes up to coat the rearview mirror in a vermillion spray. It’s happened while I was growing up, anyway…
I have a slight problem imagining someone throwing himself forward at an inching vehicle, bouncing off the front, and landing underneath it.
My guess is that Number 1’s the lie.
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My stories:
On the return trip from Australia to the US after a band event years ago, my brother had to check his pocketknife in with Customs (it made it the first way without incident, but Security in Australia caught it). He had to have it bagged seperately, and would pick it up from Customs when the flight landed. With the mess of getting 175+ students and chaperones reunited with their luggage and loaded on buses, our leader forgot my brother and all of us abandoned him at the airport (he was 21 at the time, so don’t worry, he made it home okay). The look on his face when I asked “Hey Mr. A, where’s my brother?” was priceless.
Just after getting my learner’s permit to drive, I was waiting at a stoplight. All of a sudden the car lurched forward a tiny bit. I looked back and saw a police car! I got out (yes, at the stoplight) to check the damage before going anywhere. The cop must have been moving very slowly, as there was no damage at all to either car. I fixed the cop with a glare, and he looked right at me, backed up, turned on his flashing lights, and drove off.
A local McDonalds has ketchup dispensors that operate from a small handpump on top. After waiting for my friends to get ketchup, I went to the dispensor and pressed the pump - nothing happened, and the pump only went down about a quarter of the way. Not being the brightest action in my life, I pushed a bit harder, and with a mighty “splot!” ketchup burst from the spigot and covered everything within two feet. My friends say that the ketchup had exploded from the spigot and splattered off the counter. My (formerly white) shirt was ruined. I was, understandably, quite furious with embarassment while they laughed like Carrot Top had just been run down in the parking lot by a clown car.
Hmmm, BraheSilver, I will have to guess #2. No great reason, other than I think a cop would have to be a really bad cop to just take off like that.
Gotta give it a go with my stories then.
In 6th grade, I went on a school sponsored camping trip into the mountains of Colorado. I had the luck of drawing table clean up duty after dinner one night. While walking back to the dorms afterwards, a friend and I heard a noise from the surrounding woods. Thinking it was another student trying to scare us, we threw some pine cones in the general direction. Suddenly, the wolf which was the true maker of the noise growled loudly. Thankfully, we were only about 30 feet from the door. The next morning, we were able to follow the tracks and confirm it really was a wolf we had taunted.
During a basketball game that I was watching (and not playing in), I was sitting in the seat that was picked to take part in a contest at halftime. The contest? Come down to the court, and if I make a shot from half court, I win $1,000 and free pizza for a year and everyone in my section wins a free pizza. I calmly step up, launch the shot, and watch it swish through.
While moving into an apartment during college, I was carrying a rolled up 4X8 rug into the 3rd floor apartment. Not really watchng where I was going, I tripped on a stack of books sitting in the middle of the floor. With my balance thrown off, I started falling forward. Instead of going face first onto the ground, I let go of the rug so I could break my fall. By doing that, I vaulted the rug towards and through a closed window where it then fell to the ground 3 stories below.
I have to say 3 is the lie, Mullinator. 1 & 2 could happen, but 3 seems a bit iffy.
mine:
I had gone fishing on a cool Autumn night, not expecting to catch anything, but wanting to be by the pond where the was plenty of wildlife and such. Suddenly I got a bite. I set the hook and reeled it in. I had it by the gill. I reeled quicker cause I wanted to let it go. I got it up to me when I saw that it was not one live fish, but one (dead) fish with another (dead) one in it’s mouth. I got the neighbor to come over and look at it, and he took a few pictures.
My mother had dragged my brother and I grocery shopping. She had told my brother to get a 12-pack of soda he wanted. He came back with regular Mountain Dew.
“It’s not diet.” Mumsy says
“It’s not caffeine free either.” he says.
“I don’t care about that, it’s summer vacation.” mom says. “It’s your TEETH, your TEETH I’m worried about. Get that sugar.”
We couldn’t stop laughing. Another person came down the aisle looking at us like we beloged in an asylum.
We(same people as above, except I was about five) were at a McDonalds or something. I took a little ketchup container and squeezed the prettieful solid-but-liquid into it. I sat down. My brother came over with his ketchup, then mom with the food. I love fries, so I snatched a fry from the nearest container, dunked it in my carton thingy, and popped it in my mouth. I spit it out.
“mom, this ketchup tastes funny” I said. She looks at it and says
‘This is BB-Q sauce.’
Boy I don’t know Anubis. It’s a tough call but I’ll guess #2. The fish story is too weird not to be true.
A few years ago I found myself in a convenience store and on a whim bought a lotto ticket. I very rarely play the lotto, I never watch the drawing on TV or check the numbers in the paper, but for some reason this time I plunked down my 5 bucks for some quick-picks. I took the ticket and stuffed it in my wallet and went on my happy way. For weeks afterwards I would occasionally encounter my forlorn ticket in my wallet and think, “I really ought to check to see if this is worth anything.” Well, I’m a professional procrastinator so the ticket languished in my wallet for a long time. Eventually I found myself in another convenience store and I asked the clerk to run my ticket through the machine. This he did several times but he couldn’t get the machine to read my now tattered ticket. He gave me the address of the State Lotto office and suggested I send it to them. More time went by while I procrastinated but I finally wrote a nice letter to the lotto folks and asked them to send me any money I might be owed. Eventually I got a letter back saying yes indeed my ticket was a winner (but not the grand prize jackpot) but that they couldn’t pay me as the one year expiration date had passed on the ticket. I guess I lost track of time.
When I was a little girl of about 8 years old, my entire family (including my maternal grandparents) went to the World Famous[sup]TM[/sup] San Diego Zoo. Within the larger zoo is an area called The Children’s Zoo, which has animals on display that appeal to children. They always have lots of baby animals and other cute critters as well as a petting zoo with goats and deer. On this particular occasion there was an enclosure with two baby elephants in it. By baby I mean they were about 4-5 feet tall and weighed maybe 500 lbs. each. The elephants were in a pen that was built about 6 feet below ground level and fenced with telephone polls cut at a variety of lengths. There was a huge crowd looking down into the pen at the cute elephants and I being just a little kid couldn’t see a thing. There were too many people in the way and the fence was too high. I finally worked my way over to one particular poll that was shorter than all the rest and I could just barely see the elephants by leaning out through the opening. Not satisfied with that, I climbed up on the short poll, sat down and dangled my legs over into the enclosure. So there I sat in my best little Sunday dress with my shiny black patent leather shoes on, dangling my legs into an elephant enclosure. Sure enough, after a while one of the babies ambles over and sniffs my leg with his long trunk. I guess he liked what he sniffed because he then proceeded to wrap his trunk around my leg and started to pull! I wasn’t really afraid of the elephant per se but I was afraid of the fall into the pen, so I hung onto the post on either side of me and started hollering like crazy. The crowd just pressed closer, “Oh isn’t that cute, the elephant wants to play with her.” Finally, my Grandfather who was at the far end of the enclosure heard my yells and recognized my voice. He pushed his way through the crowd, leaned out and uncoiled the elephant’s trunk from my leg and pulled me to safety. From that experience I have always felt that I had a personal invitation to go live with the elephants.
In graduate school I played on an extramural co-ed softball team comprised of faculty and students from my department. While I had been athletic as a kid, by the time Team-X formed (we couldn’t think of a good name) I was woefully out of shape. But I trained hard and gave it my best shot and I didn’t lack in the enthusiasm department. I have always been very good at the theory of softball but not particularly great at the practice of the game, much to my shame. I am great at strategizing and coaching and I can hit but my running and throwing are weak. During the season ending round-robin playoffs we were in a game that we actually had a chance of winning to get into the finals. I was playing right field and a left-handed hitter was up at bat. Now I know that southpaws pull to the right so I shifted way over. Also, this particular batter was a big strong guy so I knew he would hit deep. So I backed up almost to the far fence and waited. Sure enough he slammed one to right and I was ready. I could hear my teammates yelling for me to backup so I did, all the way to the boundary fence, the ball was falling from a tremendous height, the sun was in my eyes, I couldn’t backup any further so I just stuck out my glove and closed my eyes. I caught the ball! Trouble was, I was so far away from the infield that I couldn’t throw it back in time to prevent two runners from scoring. So I made the out but we lost the game.
Sophomore year of high school, I was manager of the football team because I’d hurt me knee in a bike accident some weeks before, so I wasn’t walking too well and such. It was raining one day in practice, and it was very cold and very wet. There was a tree nearby that had a hole in it from where a branch had falled out, so I put my head in the hole in the tree to protect myself from the rain a bit.
2000 ACF regionals, hosted by GWU. I’m on a team with two other guys (one of them our coach) and the captain/coach’s future wife. We get a tossup that starts with some random trivia about a guy, and he sounds very familiar. “Killed by a German sniper in WWI”, “son of a Johnson&Johnson chemist”, that sort of thing. Now, I’m not the brighter light in a pack of two, but that sounds way too much like my great-grandfather to pass up. So I buzz in with “Joyce Kilmer.” I look at my teammates and say “I bloody well ought to know that one?he’s my great-grandfather!”
Four or five years ago, I came across the wordstring “caloric content of sperm.” Now, being your average perverted teenager, I was muchly interested in this, so I picked up the book and read the column in question. It was followed by someone rebuking the author’s response, which in turn was followed by a thorough trashing of the rebuke. I was happy with the style and content, so I started reading the book. On a whim I went to see if there was a website to complement the book. I found that site and read it regularly, finally registering for the message board on its website in June of 2000.
