Mum! Get a bandaid....and other Tall Tales

"Mum! Get a Band-aid, quick!  Richard's chopped his finger off!"

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This is from one of those childhood stories. You know the ones. They get bigger and funnier as the years go by and a few more brain cells get whittled off into oblivion. The above sentence is from a tale my brother tells us about two of his friends who were playing "Chicken" with the axe in the back yard. Apparently Richard (whoever he was) was holding his finger on a log and then whipping it away as his young mate brought the axe down. The last time it happened he didn't get his finger away quick enough and the mate went screaming through the backyard,

"Muuum! Get a Band-aid, quick! Richard's chopped his finger off!"

I can recall seeing the young Richard as a child and yes, he was missing a finger. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't, but the story is still fun in the telling year after year!

Then there's the story I remember my friend Katrina telling me. She told me that she and her family were going to travel around Australia and her parents were going to let her tie her horse to the back of the caravan and ride it whilst they drove. I was wildly excited and impressed with this and wished with everything I had that I could go with Katrina and ride on the back if a horse tied to a caravan. Riding horses was my most favourite thing in the world! 

Now, I don't even know if Katrina owned a horse. I never saw it. I don't even know if Katrina and her family travelled around Australia, but I do know that Katrina did leave the school that year and I contented myself with "wild erratic fancies" of Katrina S riding around the country on her horse tied to the back if the family caravan, whoopin' and hollerin' like the Wild Colonial Boy...or girl in this instance!

Childhood memories are interesting things. They are bigger and brighter and scarier than the reality of what actually was. Sometimes I long to see a couple of the things that terrified me as a child just so that I can put things into perspective. Sometimes I wish I could just time travel back to a particular day that holds a significant memory for me just so I can view it with the understanding of adult eyes because I know that what I remember as real is possibly simply laid down because of my childish understanding.

When I was very, very young my Dad and I were dumped by what I remember as the most enormous wave ever. I can still see it my mind; huge and dirty with churned up sand from the bottom of the ocean floor. It was a wave to rival the one that caused the end of the Andrea Gail in the movie, "The Perfect Storm."

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I know it wasn't, but the Tall Tale I tell is that it was because that's how my childish memory laid it down. This is the wave that haunts my dreams to this day.

My childhood memory has also laid down a memory of my Nanna chasing after our car that contained my two little brothers. The car was rolling down an incline towards, what my memory says, the edge of a cliff. My little brothers who were both under the age of five had been playing in the car and had taken off the handbrake. The car started rolling. The most terrifying thought for me at the time was "there are no grownups in the car and it is moving!" The memory of that day is still very vivid to me but coloured by childish understanding. Apparently they weren't headed for the edge of a cliff but there was an embankment there and trees would have broken their descent. Still, it's a tall tale in my mind.

I'm sure every family has their Tall Tales that get taller and taller as the years go by; legends that just keep getting more and more interesting with each telling and you find yourself wondering when exactly the truth started to become distorted. I have tales of house fires and people taking breaths in their coffins that were told to me by my great aunts. I have memories of tales told by an uncle who was notorious for bending the truth and sometimes even now I wonder about them and have to clarify them with my parents because for some reason they have stayed with me throughout all these years and it seems important to check on their validity. 

Sometimes I just love listening to Tall Tales because they are filled with the innocence and invincibility of youth - the sporting tales, the rescue tales, the close shaves. They're filled with all kinds of excitement and bravado and they're told by the people I love the most and with whom I share a common history. There are tales I know are not true at all and I have to fight to keep a straight face in order to maintain the dignity of the teller and I find myself wondering about why the tales are so grandiose. Will I be a teller of outrageous tales one day?

What about you? Do you have some Tall Tales in your family? Who is your biggest Tall Tale Teller?