"Well, as an old military commander once said, 'sometimes you've got to roll a hard six," said Brian to someone who was seeking advice.
"It wasn't an old military commander. It was a fictional character from Battlestar Galactica," interrupted Shawna, ruining my conversation.
"Commander Adama was in the military Shawna! Who do you think commanded the last battlestar after the destruction of the colonies? Patton?" I replied. But it was too late, the rich advice I was passing along from the grizzled old space dog fell on deaf ears. Just because he wasn't "real."
On another occasion I was speaking to someone who had recently traveled to Ireland.
"My mother's family comes from there, the McCartys. They came over during the potato famine."
"Really? What part of Ireland were they from?"
"Ballykissangel. It's Gaelic for 'Valley of the Fallen Angel.' It's near Kildargen, north of Dublin. I used to go there in the Summers. There was the pub, Fitzgerald's, operated by Assumpta Fitzgerald, the shop run by Kathleen, the garage owned by Padraig, and of course the young English priest Father Peter Clifford. It's a beautiful area, and it's so tragic what happened to Father Clifford."
"O dear, what happened to him?"
"Well, he fell in love with Assumpta, but was torn between his duties as a priest and this passion. When they finally decided to be together she was electrocuted under her pub and died. Damn shame."
At this point Shawna once again came to the 'rescue' of the person I was talking to.
"Brandon has never been to Ireland. Ballykissangel was an Irish TV show, and all of those characters are made up. There was no tragic affair between a priest and a publican, and no one rally died. They were ACTORS," she revealed. Only her long experience teaching first-graders equips her to deal with me. I expect her to be canonized one day for her travails.
"Their love was real to me," was all I could muster, reflecting on the painful memories.
These are but two of many instances that have led to two serious accusations against my person. One, that I am a pathological liar. Two, that I don't know the difference between reality and fantasy. Both of these are blatantly untrue.
First of all, I am not a 'pathological' liar; I am a 'recreational' liar. My lies are not used for nefarious purposes, but to entertain, or illustrate a point. It is rather like the parables of Jesus, which weren't necessarily literally true stories, but they helped the common man understand what he was trying to say. Not that I'm comparing myself to Jesus; we may have similar beards, but he had six pack abs and performed miracles. If I could turn water into wine, I would lack nothing in life.
Secondly, it's not that I don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, it's that I find the difference negligible. So I haven't ever met William Adama or Peter Clifford. But I've never met Richard Nixon or Julius Caesar either. All we have of them now are stories. They have no greater reality than fictional characters that exist on TV and in books. Oh, sure people have 'met' them or 'seen them in person,' but everyone knows that eyewitness testimony is notoriously flawed. I tend to agree with Graham Greene, in his book Travels With My Aunt, when he is reflecting on the death of his relative called Joe Pulling:
"What did the truth matter? All characters, once dead, if they continue to exist in memory at all, tend to become fictions. Hamlet is no less real now than Winston Churchill, and Joe Pulling no less historical than Don Quixote."
Thus, I will continue to live in this fashion for the foreseeable future. At least until my family has me committed. I recently purchased a Kellerman's staff shirt and decided that I was going to take a summer job at the resort. Only one who studies with Johnny Castle can truly master the art of dance. In an online class recently I spoke of a notorious university test known as the Kobayashi Maru, which tested how students responded to a "no-win scenario." I did not add that the university in question was Starfleet Academy, which won't be established until 2161. When I met someone who happened to be a molecular biologist I told them that I'd interned at International Genetic Technologies, Inc., or InGen. I did not add that this was the corporation founded by John Hammond in Jurassic Park.
Sometimes I am purposely lying for pleasure, but the funny thing is, sometimes these things are real to me. The human mind is a very strange thing indeed. If I become emotionally or intellectually attached to a fictional character, they become real. They are not tangible, provable beings, but they have an existence all their own in my head. In fact, sometimes I can relate to them more than I can actual people in my life. If I'm honest, its probably because there is an impenetrable barrier between us, while with real people, there is no buffer. If this makes me an eccentric, so be it. I would rather be mad than mundane.
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