People always tell me I exaggerate.  I remember once when I met Madonna and she said, “Oh, I’ve heard about you.  You’re the one who always exaggerates EVERYTHING!”  She actually said E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G like it was a 72-syllable word.  It was long and drawn out and in that fakey British accent she occasionally uses.

So what if I exaggerate?  I’ve been doing it for over 100 years and I’ve gotten quite good at it.  If I’m telling a story, you can expect that 30% of it is true, 30% is “enhanced” for comedic effect, 30% is a bold-faced lie and the other 10% is probably from a stand-up routine I stole from Margaret Cho.

There are several people who are rife for my exaggerations.  My mom, The Bevinator, is at the very top of that list.  Every since she gave birth to me at age 62, she’s given me terrific material.   One of my favorite stories I like to make up, er, tell involves a conversation with my dad.  I once told my dad I was going to shave my head and dye the stubble blue.  Without batting an eyelash my dad said, “Fine, but don’t be late for dinner or Mom will kill you.”  Did any of this actually happen?  No, but it COULD have and that’s good enough for me.  A lot of childhood conversations with my father revolved around not upsetting my mom.  I liken my mom to a big, buzzy hornets nest that no one was to bother.  You could appreciate the nest from a respectable distance, but do NOT go at it with a stick (or a missed curfew) unless you wanted to pay the price.   It was only later in life that I purchased a handy-dandy industrial beekeeper outfit.  That outfit was called a sense of humor.

On the other hand, my dear friend (and former boss) Tamie needs absolutely NO character embellishment whatsoever.  True story, once in the middle of a menopausal meltdown (uh, hers, not mine), I literally yanked her out of bed.  She’d been cooped up in the house for three days wallowing in her pajamas.  I demanded we traipse outside and get some exercise (and fresh air).  We ended up walking a half-mile and doing yoga, while she smoked a half pack of cigarettes.  On the walk, we collectively wolfed down nearly an entire box of Oreos, too.   See, you’d think I made 82% of that up.  Nope, actually happened.  But because I exaggerate so much you’d wonder which part of it was fabricated.  All true, and the reason I know that is because that day started to get Tamie out of her rut … and solidified our friendship forever.

I went to Exaggerator’s Anonymous, but the 1,014-step program was too regimented.  I’ve even tried to be better about accuracy and logistics, but really, who cares?  James Fry wrote an entire memoir of half-truths (read that: lies), got spanked by Oprah and lived to tell about it.   What’s the worst that could happen?  (Yeah, being spanked by Oprah IS pretty bad, isn’t it?)

I joke-lie about trips I go on, friends I hang out with, arguments I’ve been in and cosmetic procedures I’ve suffered through.  My stories are epic and classic and memorable because I want them to be.  And so do you.  If I finagle a few facts here and there, remember, it’s for YOUR benefit, not mine.

You can’t handle the truth.