Some people tend to cover up the truth when they show up in public
with a black eye, broken arm or using cruches, and then try to
explain what happened. Elaborate stories are concocted, but nearly
every time the truth comes out, sometimes quite soon, sometimes years
later.
TRUE STORY #1: One young man now confesses that several years ago he
went to a family reunion with extremely red ears and had a heck of a
time trying to explain how it occurred. (He never did admit they were
burned!) "Burned how?" was the natural question. His ears had gotten
burned during one of those long, lazy weekends of nothing but
football watching and drinking beer. "I was deeply engrossed in the
game, and my wife was ironing near by. She left the room, leaving the
iron near the telephone. The phone rang...Keeping my eyes glued to
the TV set, I grabbed the hot iron and put it to my ear, thinking it
was the telephone." So how did both ears get burned, we may ask. "I
hadn't anymore than hung up, when the man called back!!"
TRUE STORY #2: Our story is not complete without telling of a man who
could not give a convincing explanation about his broken arm. He kept
muttering something about trying to stick his arm through his car
window that he thought was down.....
That was the public version, in private, he confessed that it
happened when his wife brought some potted plants indoors after they
had been out on the patio all day. A friendly garter snake had hidden
in one of the pots, and later slithered out across the floor, and the
wife spotted it.
"I was in the bathtub when I heard her scream," he related. "I
thought she was being murdered, so I jumped out of the tub, and ran
to help her. I didn't even grab a towel. When I ran into the living
room, she yelled that a snake was under the couch. I got down on all
fours to look for it, and just then my dog came up from behind and
cold-nosed' me. I guess I thought it was the snake, and I fainted
dead away.
"My wife thought I'd had a heart-attack and called for an ambulance.
I was still groggy when the medics arrived, and lifted me onto a
stretcher." "Just as they were carrying me out, the snake came out
from under the couch, and obviously freightened one of the medics. He
dropped his end of the stretcher.....and that is when I broke my
arm."