CLARIFICATION OF PREVARICATION INCLINATION

 

It’s time once again for my annual clarification column. Well, it’s not merely a clarification. The purpose of this column is more like exculpation and expiation, in the hopes that my explanation and rationalization will produce mitigation of the indignation caused by my exaggeration and prevarication. In other words, this is my, “Honey, I’m really sorry that I mentioned you in my column,” column.

 

You see, I’ve got a problem. On the one hand, I enjoy embellishing stories to make them more interesting, which is perfectly acceptable for a humor column, although not so good for a news story. (Are you listening, NBC News?) On the other hand, my wife is not thrilled to read blatant falsehoods about herself in the newspaper. “If I wanted to read lies about myself,” she recently said to me, “I would’ve gone into politics.”

 

(Actually, she never said that. That statement just struck me as kind of clever, and it seemed an appropriate comment for her to make regarding this topic, and I suspect she very well might have thought of it — if I hadn’t thought of it first — and so I just typed it out as if she said it. You see the problem here? Even when I’m in the middle of apologizing for putting words into her mouth I can’t help but put more words into her mouth!)

 

So in no particular order, I would like to offer the following clarifications, just in case some readers somehow made the ridiculous blunder of thinking that my wife said and did certain things simply because I happened to write that she said and did those certain things.

 

First, unlike what I wrote in a recent column, my wife has never shoved an ice pick into my throat, even though the social faux pas I committed many years ago gave her justification to do so. She has never threatened to shove an ice pick into my throat, nor has the thought of doing so ever even crossed her mind — at least until she read about it in that recent column. (Oops, that last phrase wasn’t quite true, but I couldn’t help myself from typing it.)

 

Next, no matter what you may have read, my wife is not the long lost heiress of a South African diamond mine fortune. I was kidding when I wrote about casually mentioning it to a loan officer who wasn’t impressed with our level of collateral. Anyway, I’d appreciate it if people would stop asking me for money (or diamonds), and I definitely would appreciate it if certain guys would stop asking my wife to dump me and run off with them to Johannesburg. (Uh oh. Did it again!)

 

Finally, it is completely untrue that my wife once flew kamikaze planes for the Japanese military. I’m not sure how this silly rumor got started — other than the fact I wrote that it was true. But I just want everyone to know, especially those folks who schedule their super market trips to coincide with my wife’s, apparently for the sole purpose of teasing her about something I wrote, that it is simply not true that my wife was a Japanese pilot during World War II. She flew for the Luftwaffe. (Yup. Again.)

 

I hope this clarification and explanation provides some restoration and reconciliation, because I’m tired of the ostracization and excommunication taking place within my domestic location. (Ugh! There I go again! With my innate impulsation for fabrication, I should be the one getting into politics. I could be the Director of Obfuscation, Hallucination, and Misrepresentation for the Administration. I’d be a sensation!)