Saturday, September 13, 2008

Time to fess up

Well, as I mentioned in the last post, the Nixon story is true. And, for a little background, I'll quote an e-mail I sent out to a friend of mine this week:

"It was either late 1973 or the beginning of 1974 when we had this sleepover. It was wintertime, I recall. My family had just moved out to Illinois late in the summer of 1973 (right after the end of taping in the White House) just before I started second grade. The slumber party was hosted by my new friend L., whose dad was a Republican congressman. I have no idea if the call that night was related to the Vietnam trip he'd just taken or a "please don't hurt me" call from Nixon, as L.'s father was one of very few Republicans in Congress to support any articles of impeachment. (Can you say... uncomfortable?) Nixon was very patient with us being goofy kids. Considering the shitstorm around him, I'm amazed by that in retrospect.

I actually thought about that when I ran into Nixon in the lobby of the embassy in Moscow just a few months before he died. He was there privately as an advisor, and the embassy had been told by Washington to offer him no support. It felt very wrong. So, seeing him standing there, alone, in the lobby, I went over and asked him if I could help him. I found his car and driver and escorted him to his ride. He was very gracious (and looked very ill.)"

So, yeah, I ate chocolatey roaches and spoke to Tricky Dick himself. Strange world, eh?

The truth about my fabrication? Well... Justin was pretty much right. All the stories are true.

Except...

Wolfgang, the Armenian guy? The space aliens didn't appear outside his place of work, they appeared outside his apartment balcony. He had his wife take photos every time the UFOs appeared. He had a vast collection of shots of small white lights with his finger pointing to them. I had to sit through a presentation of all the blurry shots during a briefing on humanitarian aid in his city council office. He carried them around in his briefcase. It was pretty messed up.

I know, I kinda pulled a fast one there, but I realized some of the stories I have are so messed up, I couldn't think of something to make up that would sound more absurd. So, the visit to the Caucasus ended up with a wee fib in it.

The Sasquatch
told me I was cheating, but hey - I did just say one of them wasn't *completely* true!

Just proof positive that real life beats fiction 99.9% of the time.

Justin, the coffee's on me. :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. That is a way cool story. I am writing about Nixon at the moment and things like that remind me that all the people and events I am writing about are 3D - not the 2D version you see on the pages of most textbooks. Totally amazing.

P.S. I had a strong feeling that the Nixon story was true, but I'm so bad at these guessing games I just had no clue about any of the others! The Nixon thing was just so detailed and bizarre that it had to be real!

Anonymous said...

So, you've been a weirdness magnet pretty much all your life, huh?
;-)
Great stories, wonderfully written!