3 Truths and a Lie

Husband is home and feeling better. (Knock on a giant, giant piece of wood.) He has been very tired (I think he slept almost 10 hours last night, which is really weird for him), but, I think he just really needs rest after the whole ordeal.

So, to lighten the mood, I bring you, 3 truths and a lie. Everyone else is doing it. (Okay, by everyone else, I mean, Nicki (www.steppingonlegos.com) and Nicole (www.raisinganimals.com), whose blogs I finally had time to read today for the first time in, I don't know, weeks.) So, the idea is, I list four "facts" about myself, and then you try to guess which one is the lie.

Let's play, okay?

1. When I was 16 years old, I once sat next to a very famous golfer on a very tiny plane, which was flying from Lyon, France to Nice, France. Anyway, the tiny plane was full, and the plane was so small there was no first class. I was very young and naive, and when this very famous golfer asked me, conversationally, what I was doing in France, I told him. And then I asked him what HE did, and he said he was a golfer. I looked at him incredulously and I said, "You GOLF? For a LIVING?" And he laughed and said "yes." Then I said, "my dad likes to golf," and he said, "well, tell your dad you sat next to J*ck Nickl*aus on your flight." And that is how I totally insulted a man that the golf world evidently thinks is a god.

2. I almost married a man (at the stupidly tender age of 19) who broke off our plans and left me to become a Catholic Priest. (I wouldn't know that was the reason until a decade later. I spent ten years believing he didn't marry me because his over-bearing and controlling mother didn't want him to marry a Swedish girl. No I'm not kidding, that's what he told me.) (His parents were Irish-American. Do you suppose there is some Irish-Swedish feud that has been quietly raging in Northern Europe for decades?) In retrospect, and with hindsight 20/20, I can say, with a good deal of humor, "Thank God I didn't marry him!"

3. Husband and I spent our honeymoon (well, the six weeks immediately following our wedding) working as camp counselors at a Boy Scout Ranch. It was a working ranch with horses and long horn steer, and it was filled with 7-9 year old boys. (We have consistently stated that this is why we waited to have children until we had been married for 5 years.) When we first arrived at the Ranch, the AirStream trailer the Boy Scouts of America was providing to us as "married staff housing" was full of mice and had no running water. We spent the first week of our marriage sleeping on separate sofas in the First Aid cabin. On one occasion I was blockaded in the cabin by one of the long horn steer that had gotten loose. A long horn steer is very, very large. And extremely intimidating.

4. When I was 8 years old, I broke my arm in 3 places and spent 6 days in the hospital in traction. My siblings and I were playing "Superman" in the basement, which involved standing on top of a toy refrigarator and leaping forward, to land on our stomachs on an old mattress. Being a clutz, I missed the mattress and landed on my arm (and my face.) I told my mother that I fell on the steps going down into the basement, and I never told her the truth until I was almost 25 years old (and she was still ticked!). The only thing that didn't suck about being in traction (because pretty much EVERYTHING totally sucked about that) was that it was my right arm that I broke, and I am right handed. During the time I had my arm hanging above my head, attached to a traction pole, I learned to use my left hand, and out of necessity continued to use it for many things until the case came off weeks and weeks later. To this day, I am able to do most things with my left hand, except write.

Okay, so, take a guess? Which one is the lie?

LM