…life as hyperbole

My husband knows my buttons. All he has to say is “Stop lying.” That’s it. The rocket is lit and I go ballistic.

I do not lie! I exaggerate. I always have. It’s a trait found in all good writers and I'd like to think that someone, sometime will exaggerate enough to consider me one of those.

He thinks I should warn him when I’m exaggerating—that it should be identifiable. Good grief, it's not like it’s a foreign language.

To me,
“I never exaggerate.” Note the voice inflection, and the facial expression? See, it’s easy to spot.[1] Venting again, T.

I only use exaggeration when I feel that it’s absolutely necessary. When I screech, “I’ve told you for the millionth time,” it is because that is infinitely more believable than calmly stating, “Child, I’ve told you for the eighty-eighth time.” Nope, it has to be millionth.[2]

To me,
As I was saying… how can he exist, always living totally grounded in reality? Life is so much more entertaining when the dull and mundane are exaggerated. For example:
I’ve eaten a horse,” when in actuality, I’ve only eaten six peanut butter cookies, two pieces of bread, tuna casserole, most of the lettuce and cottage cheese, the spaghetti leftovers, and a box of Girl Scout cookies? It feels like horse, and the exaggeration makes the point! T.

Is that lying? I don’t think so! It’s my life—just one more extreme after another. I speak and live an exaggerated non-reality because it’s more pleasant to think that the inanities I am living are just part of a hyperlife.

When I walk around with an inflated view of everything, nothing can ever be as bad as I perceive it to be. Life isn’t truly crazy; war is an overstatement; drugs are inflated; food or oil crisis is nonexistent, big brother is an embellishment; terrorist threats are overdone. It’s all hyperbole.

In my mind, it’s okay to state facts, to live mostly in reality, but never go for the whole thing! Real is all too real.

Reality bite: I’m really good at rationalization too!

[1] For the record, all of Hollywood speaks in exaggeration.
[2] Million, by the way is a keyword warning of overstatement—except, of course, when relating to the government.