# 147 RUBBER BOOT!

There are categories of fiction. First there is the unexpected exposure to fiction that happens to all of us at one time or another. You know how it is. Those all too frequent conversations with someone who promises to reveal ‘exactly how it happened’. And although the facts are told with conviction, you know what you’re hearing isn’t accurate.

So how should one react? I guess that depends on one’s assessment whether the creator of this fiction truly believes what they are telling you. If I am convinced that they sincerely believe what they are telling me, I can be pretty congenial about the crap I’m hearing. I can let it go. It’s relatively easy to forgive someone who doesn’t know any better.

But then there is that other kind of fiction. Those other half-truths told deliberately and knowingly. The stories that start out small, straight forward, and believable. But all it takes is one word to acknowledge that I am listening, and the story becomes an orgy of fact and fiction copulating and procreating at the speed of light. Beneath the rumble of the conversation I can hear a monster growing, stressing at the seams, expanding with hot air.

This kind of discussion is quite different from the fiction of the truth-challenged individual that doesn’t know any better. This is not so easy to disregard. In fact, I get truly annoyed. These are discussions offensive to my intelligence. Annoying enough, but meantime, my panties are in a bunch due to my frustrating efforts to remember my manners – the rule about listening when someone is talking. And what is even worse, by being mannerly, by continuing to listen, I find I am encouraging more of the same. So now the story teller is rambunctiously searching their fantasy world for more fictional additions.

So how do you handle this kind of exchange? More often than not I want to hold up my hand and yell “Rubber Boot!” and sometimes I do. But that is not always appropriate. Can one react like this when it is a Member of Parliament, Doctor, Church Minister, your boss, or a relative that you know for a certainty will become overly ballistic or burst into tears if you call them on their BS? The bursting into tears is the worst. Then what do you say, “I’m sorry you are such a liar.” So regardless of what I do, or don’t do, it is truly a dilemma. A dilemma because fact and fiction cannot be juggled around as if they were one and the same. It doesn’t work anymore than casting a moon in a daytime sky for sunbathing and a sun in a nighttime sky for sleeping. Each has a fixed place, a fixed function, and it is important that this is understood.

And so, in concluding this rant, I think I might have a solution. Maybe we just need to modernize and update our etiquette guidelines. Why not do society (and me) a grand favor by adding a new rule? A rule that at any given moment in time, it is acceptable to hold up the hand with all grace and decorum and yell loudly, “RUBBER BOOT!!” Accepting that as social etiquette would certainly condense the circular discussions in political circles, town hall meetings, school meetings, and in our private lives as well without damaging reputations of dignity.

So now it’s your turn. Any other solutions? How do you handle it when you are nailed down as a captive audience needing accurate information and finding that all you’re getting is a bunch of crap?