According to the rules of the game, I am the winner since no one guess correctly which of my tall tales are lies. Even The Electrician missed one, and he’s seen me vomit, so don’t feel too bad about not figuring out from wherever you are in the world.

I plan to write an entire essay about each of the true statements at some point in the not-painfully-distant future, but for now, I’ll stick with a brief explanation.

1. (true) When I was a grocery store cashier, I made customers scan their own live lobsters.

Lobsters and crabs are the spiders of the sea. They are not food. Rather, they are vermin with crunchy exoskeletons and beady little eyes. When I worked at the grocery store, the meat and seafood department just wrapped the lobsters in brown paper after they were selected by (sick, sick) customers and slapped a barcode on the packages. Lobsters do not appreciate being wrapped in paper and writhe around when thus restrained. I could not bear to touch them and told customers up front they would be scanning their own sea insects if they chose to come through my lane.

2. (true) My parents dressed me mostly in boy clothes for the first year and a half of my life.

I’m not entirely certain why it happened this way. Being the oldest, no one can use the hand-me-down excuse for the fact I was dressed in blue overalls, blue sleepers, and even a blue bunny snowsuit for most of first couple years.

3. (false) I trained Sherman to ring a bell hanging at the back door when he needs to “go.”

While it’s certainly true such a feat is possible, and apparently wide-spread based on readers’ comments, Sherman is trained to “be quick” on command. The spotted one sprinkles the snowbank when I put him out and ask him to, so there is no reason he needs a bell to tell me the time is near. I prefer to train the dog to listen to me, not train me to listen to the dog. (Pack leader, yada yada). Sherman does have subtle signals, like pacing in double time, that indicate he needs to go just in case his schedule is a little bit wonky, but generally he goes when he’s asked to and we have not had an accident in well over a year. (Sherman is 19 months old).

4. (false) I have a photo of Audrey Hepburn and my painting of Jim Morrison leaning against the wall in my livingroom.

While both Jim and Audrey rank high on my list of people I wish weren’t dead, neither’s face currently adorns the dollhouse. There is, however, a photo poster of Marilyn Monroe and my painting of Billie Holiday leaning against the wall beside Sherman’s pupason chair. You might be able to spot them in past Mammal Mondays photos. I swear I’ll actually hang them up sometimes soonish.

5. (false) I have only the first line of a little elephant tattoo because I chickened out a little too late.

Um, yeah. Clearly a big fat lie. If I ever did chicken out in the middle of a tattoo, I’d be left with just a little dot; there is no way I could stay on that table long enough to permit a line. Remember how poorly I do with needles?

6. (true) A sheep broke both my finger and my nose, on separate occasions.

Back home on the “farm,” which we never actually farmed but kept a couple pet sheep on, the ram we borrowed to impregnate our ewes attacked me every chance he got. Once he butted me repeatedly with his aim locked on my left pinky. Another time, he butted the sheep shack door just as I unlatched it from the outside, sending me flying backwards into the grass with a gushing nose that never healed properly.

Thanks for playing along, friends! For the record, I still can’t stand corduroy.

 

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