I have a friend that lives in a fantasy world, the lies have got ever more elaborate over the years and I worry that it is time for an intervention.
The following is a very abbreviated list of the lies and my internal reactions and a stab at some of the actual truths.
(Discussing a town that I hate, the last time I visited was with him, some time in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s)
‘Yeah, that was when I had the Evo 8’
- Nope, you had a 1988-1992 Mitsubishi Galant/Lancer grandpa edition with an automatic gearbox. The Evo 8, which you never owned, came out in 2003.
‘Oh, must have been the Evo4’
- Sigh, nope, you have never owned one. The original Evo came out in 1992 – The events that I am describing were 1990 or 1991 at the very latest. Additionally the original Evo was very, very hard to find outside of Japan. The EVO IV was produced from 1996 to 1998. I think you had a Cavalier at the time. I think it was a GL/GLS spec, also with an automatic gearbox, too.
(Discussing my disdain for vans and their drivers)
‘I thought about stuffing a V10 in (his van) like <redacted> did in his transit van
- Nope <redacted> talked a lot about putting a Rover V8 in his rotten transit van, it was a reasonably well documented conversion, but despite finding a suitable Rover V8, he never got around to it as the MOT man showed him how rotten the thing was and he traded it for a newer Renault Traffic van if I remember correctly.
‘That thing was really quick’
- no, it wasn’t, it never got built, had it been built, the 150-180hp (Rover V8) would not have made it ‘really quick. It would have been quicker than the worn to hell Ford 2.0, but not really ‘quick’ in any sense of the word.
‘I chipped the EVO 4/5/6/7/8/9 (depending on the conversation). It made so much power it broke the dyno – that was rated at over 1000hp.
- There are a couple of ~1000hp EVO’s out there, they need way more than a chip, usually it includes massive turbo’s, huge intercoolers, big engine mods and a lot of money. You might have eaten a few chips in your Galant, but….
(Following a visit home, I mentioned that I had taken a couple of helicopter lessons)
To my dad after I had gone home – ‘I flew Max around Leicestershire in a helicopter’
- Nope – I mentioned to you that I had a couple of helicopter lessons. Whereby you said…
‘Oh yeah, I got my licence in (varying year) and spend a fair bit of time teaching nowadays.
- But then you looked confused when I mentioned that I was struggling with hover turns and getting my head to understand that more left pedal needs more throttle and vice-versa and you can actually have a situation where you turn right, but stay at the same height by rolling off the throttle slightly. I was looking for tips. I seriously doubt you have ever sat in a whirly bird.
‘Of course it is a bit different when you are used to a Chinook.’
- Blink – I bet it is, the little Robinson R22/R44 that the flight school use are real rather than imaginary.
(Various times when money or the cost of things comes into play)
‘I won the lottery and bought an island near Richard Bransons’
- Well, why are you still living in Burbage ?
‘We paid our mortgage off years ago mate, we are saving our pennies for our retirement.
- Thats great – but your better half was telling me that you are looking to remortgage to build an extension. So I am not so sure you are being honest here.
I mentioned that I have re-connected with my daughter and that I am now a grand-dad !
‘My eldest daughter committed suicide.’
- Nope. You were are not old enough. When this first surfaced, I think that you would have had to become a father at twelve. As far as I remember, you never had a relationship at the right sort of times to have a teenage daughter than nobody had ever met.
(I had many heard several versions of this before, but it was not ‘my daughter’ it was a friends daughter, or a customer, or some other female at random, usually the victim is found in a bath with their wrists cut, I am sure that there is an old episode of Taggart that sparked his imagination.)
(When the subject comes around to old friends. Specifically after seeing an old friend for the first time in years)
‘Remember {insert random girl from school} ?
- Nope, I barely remember anyone.
- Or, yes, she was pretty horrible to me as far as I remember.
‘Well I saw her in town the other day/week/month/last year, she wanted me to fix her electrics, shag her, shag her and her younger sister or even shag her while her husband filmed it’ – Well it would be a shame not to huh ???
- I would bet serious money that you didn’t do any of the above.
‘Do you remember {insert random boys name here} from School. He got arrested, his father was done for handling stolen cars, he is living on an island, he died (yet is still on Facebook), he is a customer now, he is doing really well and wants me to setup a company for him, he is retired and wants me to setup a company with him etc….’
- Barely, I have pretty much blanked out much of that time. Oddly the ‘wants me to setup a business with him lie seems to be very common. Usually it is robotics or alarms or similar.
(talking about some tech that I worked on in the late 1980’s, that is still pie in the sky.
‘Yeah, I got a camless engine working for Lamborghini back in (time five years before I was working on the project), but we struggled with it over 200mph for $nonsense_reason’
- Back in the day, we had one running but struggled with all sort of issues beyond about 4k rpm, when we finally got past that, it was fantastically unreliable. It was only by having a low compression, non-interference design that we were able to lower the costs enough to test the theory. The best of the best was a V6 that had a wonderfully drivable bottom end, but we ran out of processor ability just as we got into the meat of the power (about 140hp if memory serves). We simply struggled with everything you can imagine. To manage 200mph in a Lamborghini needs at least 500+ hp, so, yeah, bullshit. Camless Tech
(Current jobs and projects – I am a product manager and love the job)
Not sure I told you, but BMW paid me £20,000 (later £30,000) for a nights work redesigning a robot for them. It took just 6 (later 8) hours, (flashes picture of random car assembly robot on google) and they paid me £20,000 (or £30,000 a few hours later) in cash for the work I did. I did it all by hand too, it is all about understanding such things.
Yeah, I made about £270,000 in the last year, I put most of it into trust accounts for the kids to avoid paying tax.
But this year, due to my {insert disease of the day}, I’ve been on disability all year and apart from the BMW contract and a couple of undercover missions ( ! ), I’ve barely done anything, it has been great to pick the kids up from school though. Oh I did one other job, but I’m not allowed to tell you about that one, but it did pay well.
(discussing shoulder injuries and how we are healing)
‘I had experimental shoulder surgery that needed a 3D printed part. ‘
- Wow, beats my plate and six screws, impressively small scars too !
- (reads up on it). Erm, no, just no. https://3dprint.com/11086/3d-printed-shoulder-replica/ not with such tiny scars.
(To my partners’ BIL)
‘I was in the SAS / Army / Para’s / Airforce’
- Exactly when was this ?
- I mean I may have not seen you for a while at various times, but I keep tabs on you.
- I just cannot figure out when this was. Seriously I cannot figure it out.
(Common boast some time back)
‘I was one of the pilots taxiing Concorde at Coventry airport’
(When Alexandra got her Karate brown belt)
‘I gave up with Karate as there is nobody to teach me anything, I did my black belt twice already.’
- There may be a grain of truth here, some karate students do turn around and redo. But ‘nobody to teach me’ feels a tad far fetched at best.
(Talking about a trip to Singapore and how hard I was finding to learn even tiny bits of Mandarin)
‘Oh yeah, when I spent a year in {insert country} I learned a fair bit of $language.
- Which year was that ? I mean exactly, you lived at home with your parents until you were in your late twenties, then you bought a house with your partner. Every time I visited my father or my brother when I was stuck down south, I heard stories of you book packing, or attending tech college etc. There was no big gaps.
(I had a really bumpy flight out of the UK four years ago, I thought we were going to die)
‘I remember flying out of the {war zone} with six dead and nineteen injured, I had to fly one handed and one legged due to {injury}. That was a rough flight I can tell you.
- Flying a helicopter with one hand is pretty much limited to the movies, they are actors, they are not flying, they are sitting in the seat while the helicopter is flown by an actual pilot.
(back to people, while walking to pier)
‘You will never guess who I saw, in $city, recently.