Everyday Canvas

Tall Tales

Prompt: My Dad told me that he helped Daniel Boone move in and rode with Jesse James! Did your parents ever tell you tall tales like this?

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My childhood is so far away that I don’t recall any tall tales. My mother used to make up stories and fairy tales on the spur of the moment, only if we had a few children visiting and they were making too much noise. She rarely told me a story when I was alone; earlier, however, before I learned to read, she read to me, but I was already reading myself when I turned four, so she didn’t bother after that. To the best of my memory, tall tales were out of the circulation in our home; it could be that they were probably considered as bad as lies. The first I heard about them, such as Paul Bunyan tales was at school.

A tall tale has farfetched elements, related as if they were facts. Some are exaggerations of actual events. Some take their plots from historical events and people.

I guess it is all right to tell tall tales for the fun of it, but tall tales become counterproductive when the tall-tale teller believes them himself, such as a pretty young girl strongly believing that every male in the universe will fall for her.

As a tall-tale teller, I can remember one guy from another country while I, my husband, and our sons were traveling overseas. This guy told us he’d be the next prime minister of the said country as all wheels were in motion, and it was a done deal. So much so that our sons referred to him as the prime minister. From what we heard and read later on in the papers, he didn’t even make it to the preliminaries. But then, it is the nature of the beast. Just listen or watch the political debates going on with both parties. Tall tales abound.