Stranger than ficton…

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

“You couldn’t make this up if you tried.”

That’s a phrase I’m sure you’ve heard before from someone telling you some story that was so far out there you’d swear they were pulling your leg.

Funny thing, though, is that there are so many true stories out there that have such fanciful details or twists and turns that it is hard to believe the person telling them. That’s the great thing about the truth… if it’s true, you don’t have to make it up, and after 50 years on this planet I can assure you that just because it’s a crazy story doesn’t mean it’s not true.

There’s another great quote that goes along the same lines: “The truth is stranger than fiction.” I like this one — have liked it for years, in fact, because, again, bizarre circumstances and events often collide to create real things that the combined power of Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and William Shakespeare could not produce if given 100 years to come up with it.

Here’s the best part of that quote, though, as I just recently learned… that’s not all of it. It’s like another famous quote: “Blood is thicker than water,” which suggests that family bonds are the strongest kind of bond, but that’s not the whole quote!

See VIEWPOINT, page A10 VIEWPOINT

From page A4

The whole, original quote, from Heinrich der Glichezare’s “Reynard the Fox” way back in 1180, is, “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” which is actually the exact opposite of the partial quote we use today.

Anyway, back in 1874, Mark Twain, master of the quotable quote, even if he didn’t actually say many that are attributed to him, really did say, “The truth is stranger than fiction, bur it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”

Like I said, I only just recently learned this, and man, do I love this quote even more now! The truth, he’s saying is so potentially so crazy, so unimaginable that, like the first line I shared with you, you really can’t make up reality. That’s what makes life worth living. It’s unpredictable. It’s sometimes chaotic or messy and you may very well find yourself asking, “How, from where I started, did I ever wind up here?” And I think that’s great.

Now, there is a catch, though. Sometimes, you’ll come across someone who simply can’t accept that something is true. Or on the other end, you will encounter someone who so badly wants to believe that something is true even when it is clearly not.

I’m not talking about somethng like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or Idaho doesn’t really exit (although, I am concerned with how the government basically admitted aliens and UFOs were real and we all kind of collectively shrugged and went on about our day). I’m talking about people who claim that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged or vaccines cause autism or Trump won the 202 election. Watch out, because those folks really are stranger than fiction…