The dirty lies writers tell themselves

We’ve somehow gone from freezing temperatures to scorching ones within a week, so Pythagoras and I are heading into the mountains for a camping trip.

I apologize in advance for not replying to blog comments right away, but I do have another post set to go up Friday, so come back tomorrow.

In preparing for this camping adventure, I’m reminded of the first time Pythagoras and I went fishing.

We both grew up in outdoorsy families, so camping and hiking and fishing were regular occurrences. Though we’d camped together many times, it wasn’t until we’d been together a couple years that we embarked on a fishing trip.

We rented a boat at Diamond Lake and headed out. I had a good book, Pythagoras had a fishing pole, and all was right with the world.

Suddenly, his line began to jerk.

“Quick, grab the net,” he ordered.

I stared, baffled, as he reeled the fish in. The second it came flopping into the boat, I burst into tears.

Pythagoras looked at me. “What’s wrong?”

“The fish,” I sobbed. “I don’t want it to die.”

“I’ll throw it back, no problem.”

“No! I want to eat it,” I whimpered. “I just don’t like seeing it die.”

He was baffled by this. “I thought you grew up fishing all the time.”

“I did!” I cried. “We just never caught anything.”

Being raised in a family of terrible fishermen had not prepared me for this spectacle. There was some more discussion, a bit more sobbing, and a quick, solemn death for the fish.

As soon as dinner was stashed safely in the cooler, Pythagoras turned to me.

“The fish was probably really old,” Pythagoras said. “On death’s doorstep. We saved all the other fish from having to watch him die slowly of old age or liver cancer.”

I thought about that for a minute, then nodded. “He was also a pedophile.”

“Absolutely,” Pythagoras agreed. “For years, he’s been terrorizing the other fish.”

“And he’s a compulsive liar.”

“And a car thief,” he added.

“Did you hear how he voted in the last presidential election?”

By the time we’d finished assassinating the fish’s character, I felt almost glad about removing him from the gene pool. We caught several more evil fish that afternoon, and they were all delicious stuffed with lemon slices and cooked over a campfire.

OK, so I know it’s unlikely each fish we catch is a tawdry character preying on children and passing out KKK literature. But believing it for a few hours assuages my conscience and makes me feel less guilty about something that’s a bit uncomfortable for me.

Am I the only one to use my overactive writer’s imagination like this? Do you regularly lie to yourself so you feel better about something? Tell me in the comments.

I’ve got some granddaddy pedophile fish to catch.

Pythagoras shows off our first evil fish, may he rest in peace.