Wednesday, February 11, 2015

PANTS ON FIRE

My sister-in-law posted on FB a picture of one of the Minions from Despicable Me saying, "Just once in my life I'd actually like to see a liar's pants catch on fire."

Loved it!

But then I got to thinking…we'd all be running around like human torches, hurling ourselves into rivers, streams and oceans to douse the flames. The intensity of the fires and the steam rising from buttocks being extinguished would contribute substantially to global warming.

We all lie from time to time but, what makes a lie become a truth.

© Nance Thacker 1990
I found a pile of roughed cartoons and I'm in the process of inking them.
We've all had them, those holidays from hell. Nothing goes in our favour. It's nobody's fault. Or, maybe we've slipped into a frustration induced, period of incompatibility with our travel companions and we're ready to strangle each other. We simmer and seethe for the duration of our return trip home. 

If there is any effort to converse at all, all that passes for conversation is "Humpf" or "What - e - ver" - delivered with "tsk", sigh and eye roll for maximum effect. If you, like me, are of the white Anglo Saxon persuasion then the WASP fight consisting of deafening silence is most likely to be your choice.

What a waste of money THAT trip was! you're all thinking.

But once we're back home, ask us how our trip was and, dollars to donuts, you'll hear, "great"… "good"… or at the very least "OK".

What's happened here? Is it taboo to admit we've had a shitty time? Are we averse to sounding like whiners? If we tell the flat out truth that, "The f***ing trip was f***ing horrible", does it make us sound ungrateful for the opportunity that we've had to even have had a shitty vacation? After all some people never get away anywhere and here we are complaining. What nerve! 

Do we play the consensual game wherein holiday = great time, so we try to keep up with, or even surpass, the Joneses with tales of great adventures that all would envy? In my younger days, before I'd experienced any intimate relationships, I seriously believed (because they made it sound so romantic) that every holiday any couple I ever knew had been on, was INCREDIBLE!  

OK, so I was a bit naive. One of the big attractions of being "in a relationship" was to share in travelling adventures like…well, like Jonathan and Jennifer Hart in that TV show HART TO HART (that ran from 1979 - 1984). Maybe solve a crime or two along the way; not criminally offend the consensual code with a shitty experience.


Jonathan and Jennifer Hart gasp in horror at the very idea
that their trip could be anything other than fabulous
What if we're not glossing over our difficulties at all? Somehow the good times (as meagre as they may be) have risen like cream to the top. We scrape off these stories, embellish their magnificence, and with each re-telling our belief in the truth of we had a great time becomes so increasingly strong that it comes to embody the essence of our whole experience.

Is it a mark of resilience or a default mechanism that our inner Jonathans and Jennifers survive un-singed, bonded more deeply, and ready to tackle yet more adventures?