Where the Poop Grows by Shel Silverstein
In today's news, Jessica totally schooled me in the world of plausible lying.
For those of you who know me, you know that this is the only activity of mine that can accurately be called a hobby. It consists of making bizarre statements with no factual basis with as much conviction and credibility as one can muster. One of my personal triumphs came last semester in my poetry class when we were discussing the hygenic basis for circumcision. A young lady remarked that the penis stays cleaner without a foreskin. And I said, "Actually, that's where the phrase 'Keep your nose clean' came from. It was a corruption of 'Keep your penis clean'."
It was a success. A success is defined by the number of people who believe it. My remark caused a silence to fall over the room. Almost everyone had taken it, but someone had the temerity and cynicism to ask, "Is that really true?"
"It might be," I answered.
With that introduction to my favorite pasttime, I must now tell you why I love Jessica. She got me. ME! I am the king of making shit up and she totally got me. We were lolling about after watching Clueless, a classic of American Cinema, and I mentioned that my mother used to read me Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky often and that it was my favorite poem as a child. It didn't have anything to do with Clueless, but that's kind of how our conversations go. Jessica, after ridiculing my predictable and apparently trite childhood fascination with Carroll's poem of sing-song violence and parental pride, said, "When I was a little girl, my favorite poem was Where the Poop Grows, by Shel Silverstein." There was a moment. There always is a moment after a plausible lie in which the liar must wait and see if the bait will be taken. There's always a pause before you know how hard your listener will bite. In those brief seconds, I considered that Jessica might be lying. I considered that she was smirking viciously. I also considered that Shel Silverstein was a weird fucking guy and that I was hardly familiar with every one of his works. I lay there, tottering on the brink of belief...
And I fell.
As I reached for my laptop and googled Where the Poop Grows by Shel Silverstein, Jessica convulsed with mirth and, between girlish snorts and charming giggles, revealed her duplicity.
Oh, if ever there was a girl for me...
For those of you who know me, you know that this is the only activity of mine that can accurately be called a hobby. It consists of making bizarre statements with no factual basis with as much conviction and credibility as one can muster. One of my personal triumphs came last semester in my poetry class when we were discussing the hygenic basis for circumcision. A young lady remarked that the penis stays cleaner without a foreskin. And I said, "Actually, that's where the phrase 'Keep your nose clean' came from. It was a corruption of 'Keep your penis clean'."
It was a success. A success is defined by the number of people who believe it. My remark caused a silence to fall over the room. Almost everyone had taken it, but someone had the temerity and cynicism to ask, "Is that really true?"
"It might be," I answered.
With that introduction to my favorite pasttime, I must now tell you why I love Jessica. She got me. ME! I am the king of making shit up and she totally got me. We were lolling about after watching Clueless, a classic of American Cinema, and I mentioned that my mother used to read me Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky often and that it was my favorite poem as a child. It didn't have anything to do with Clueless, but that's kind of how our conversations go. Jessica, after ridiculing my predictable and apparently trite childhood fascination with Carroll's poem of sing-song violence and parental pride, said, "When I was a little girl, my favorite poem was Where the Poop Grows, by Shel Silverstein." There was a moment. There always is a moment after a plausible lie in which the liar must wait and see if the bait will be taken. There's always a pause before you know how hard your listener will bite. In those brief seconds, I considered that Jessica might be lying. I considered that she was smirking viciously. I also considered that Shel Silverstein was a weird fucking guy and that I was hardly familiar with every one of his works. I lay there, tottering on the brink of belief...
And I fell.
As I reached for my laptop and googled Where the Poop Grows by Shel Silverstein, Jessica convulsed with mirth and, between girlish snorts and charming giggles, revealed her duplicity.
Oh, if ever there was a girl for me...
posted by jw at
12:45 AM
2 Comments:
You would get me everytime. I'm a fucking idiot. I'm cumber than Alicia Silverstone, on and off screen.
Where the Poop Grows could totally be the name of a Shel Silverstein poem.
dumber*
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