chronicling a compulsive liar part two.

"some people will tell you they were raised by wolves. i won't tell you that, but i will tell you i was raised by rednecks.

you see, i was left outside a grocery store on a mechanical pony. you know, the kind that costs a quarter and you never really think about where it's manufactured or why the saddle looks the way it does. that kind of mechanical pony. so anyway, i was left learning how to ride the thing sidesaddle since it'd been conveyed to me that this was the ladylike way to go about it; although at age five it was unlikely that unladylike behaviour would've merited public scrutiny, especially of the grocery store variety, i wasn't comfortable taking any chances.

well, time elapsed and nobody did come back for me. i kept practicing my technique, but after the quarter ran out it got a little difficult to double-imagine what riding an actual pony would be like. and then, just as i started to wonder if this was in fact a mechanical pony or a mechanical horse, a redneck family sauntered over and began describing the superiority that a nascar vehicle had over nearly all other forms of transportation, including my now stationary mechanism. they made some fairly good (albeit unsolicited) points, leaving me no choice but to adopt their views as my own. seeing as we were now united on such a defining issue, it became clear to me that it would be impossible to go back to my former life.

fortunately they extended me an invitation to come join their family; they'd recently acquired an extra lawn chair in a particularly lucrative dumpster diving excursion, but with no one to fill it up, the fixture lacked true purpose. apparently this rule did not apply to the corpses of cars that littered the front lawn, of which i counted at least nineteen before i remembered that was as far as i'd gotten in terms of numeric sequencing. to this day, i have only progressed to the number twenty-three.

my new redneck family did not, to my surprise, have red necks. they did, however, have an abundance of canned beverages, ranging from beer to mountain dew. (as an aside, the only spiritually heightened experience i've ever had followed the consumption of approximately twelve gallons of mountain dew in a span of seven minutes, and i would highly recommend it for enlightenment provided you're not a diabetic.) other dietary staples included a variety of game procured from both the lawn and the road, as well as barbecue potato chips and cheese curls that, over time, turned my fingers a permanent shade of orange.

my wardrobe was fairly extensive considering the lack of funds in my new redneck family. by some stroke of luck, goodwill was never short on t-shirts advertising places i'd never been and concert tours i'd never attended; as a result i became a master at spelling a variety of words and phrases including 'las vegas' and 'jesus saves', earning me consecutive awards and titles as the school spelling bee champion.

my redneck brethren and i had quite a bit of free time on our unwashed hands, during which we liked to shoot things and chew tobacco and not cut our hair. i gradually forgot about my real parents and instead filled the new vacancies in my memory with all sorts of vital information, including a plethora of swear words and how to draw a confederate flag. i never did get to test out my sidesaddle technique on a real horse, but i can assure you that i've mastered the art on an ATV, an experience i'm sure my real parents would have never afforded me. so yes, to answer your question, i guess i do believe in fate."