Here's a challenge: Get through an entire day without lying. This means admitting that the reason you didn't make it to the meeting was you overslept, not that you got a flat tire. Or that those leather pants your best friend is wearing actually do make her look like a fat cow, just as she feared. Or that the dinner you were served is gross and inedible, not at all "Fabulous!" like you tell the waitress when she comes over to inquire as to how everything is. I can't speak for other cultures, but here in America, lying is our second-most favorite activity, right behind self-aggrandizement. Naturally, the two go hand-in hand.
Personally I've always found that making myself seem bigger, better or more interesting has had the opposite effect, and that most people respond negatively to anyone whose life experiences trump their own. Because of that I rarely tell anyone my true life story. But since today is a day for no lies, here goes: Wow, this is scary.
I wasn't really born in Brooklyn. I was really born in Marrakesh, where my father was a dope smuggler and my mother sold figs and kumquats at a street market, the kind you see in that scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when Indie chases through the streets looking for Marion who is hidden inside a basket. As for my being kidnapped at age four, I actually was, but not at Coney Island. It was at Disneyland in California, where our family moved after fleeing Marrakesh just in the nick of time. And really, I was five.
I grew up on a houseboat in Sausalito, then we moved to New York City so I could attend the Julliard School of Music to study the piano, being a child prodigy. After graduation and a few appearances at Carnegie Hall, I tired of that life and took a job waiting tables at Windows on the World, where I was working on September 11, 2001, the day the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. I escaped through a combination of quick thinking and a little-known secret stairway, and luckily without a scratch on me. My husband and son do not even know all of this and wow, will they be stunned. (I guess tonight I'll have a lot of explaining to do.)
But hey-- maybe I can get my own reality TV show out of this, or at least a really long article written about me on the front page of The Arts section of The New York Times (whose motto is "All the News That's Fit to Print"), like the one about comedian Steve Rannazzisi in yesterday's paper. It jumped onto the second page and had two pictures and lots of quotes about how sorry he was for lying about a whole chunk of his life that never happened but got him lots of sympathy and made him seem heroic. His impassioned explanation --"I don't know why I said this." -- certainly helps us feel his pain and forgive him.
Boo-hoo and all that Steve, but I bet your phone is ringing off the hook today.
I wasn't really born in Brooklyn. I was really born in Marrakesh, where my father was a dope smuggler and my mother sold figs and kumquats at a street market, the kind you see in that scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when Indie chases through the streets looking for Marion who is hidden inside a basket. As for my being kidnapped at age four, I actually was, but not at Coney Island. It was at Disneyland in California, where our family moved after fleeing Marrakesh just in the nick of time. And really, I was five.
I grew up on a houseboat in Sausalito, then we moved to New York City so I could attend the Julliard School of Music to study the piano, being a child prodigy. After graduation and a few appearances at Carnegie Hall, I tired of that life and took a job waiting tables at Windows on the World, where I was working on September 11, 2001, the day the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. I escaped through a combination of quick thinking and a little-known secret stairway, and luckily without a scratch on me. My husband and son do not even know all of this and wow, will they be stunned. (I guess tonight I'll have a lot of explaining to do.)
But hey-- maybe I can get my own reality TV show out of this, or at least a really long article written about me on the front page of The Arts section of The New York Times (whose motto is "All the News That's Fit to Print"), like the one about comedian Steve Rannazzisi in yesterday's paper. It jumped onto the second page and had two pictures and lots of quotes about how sorry he was for lying about a whole chunk of his life that never happened but got him lots of sympathy and made him seem heroic. His impassioned explanation --"I don't know why I said this." -- certainly helps us feel his pain and forgive him.
Boo-hoo and all that Steve, but I bet your phone is ringing off the hook today.
Who is Steve Rannazzisi?
ReplyDeleteA liar with a good agent!
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