We've all met people who don't mind blatantly lying to our faces about things we already know a lot about. And I'm not talking about obscure things like the airspeed of African swallows or anything like that, but rather the sorts of things many of us grow up with: Cars, computers, this/that/theotherthing.
I meet at least two or three geeks each year who try to tell me all about this thing called ".NET" and how it's going to change development on the Amiga forever.
Yeah. Thanks for the tip.
They lie in really obvious ways, and they think you can't tell. It's like cats who sit under chairs - they think they're invisible, but you know what? They aren't.
Yesterday morning, I was meeting with a representative from the headhunting firm I've teamed up with here in New London. He wanted to treat me to a donut and a cup of coffee before my first day of work (which went swimmingly well, thankyouverymuch).
I got to the donut shop before he did, and some guy inside saw me pull up in my Mini. I get a lot of questions about it, so I'm pretty used to people walking up to me to ask if I like it/am scared to drive it/wish I had a big SUV instead/feel like a pansy in such a girly car. The answers, of course, are "Yes," "No," "No," and "No." I'm used to answering these questions.
Anyway, as I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted by that tangent back there, some guy walked up to me and started asking questions about the car. I got the usual ones: "How much was it?" "Is it safe to drive next to semis in that?" "Aren't you afraid the wind's going to blow it away?" "Do you have a little poodle with pink ribbons in its fur to match?" "Do you think I should paint my kitchen aqua or fuchsia?"
After the barrage of IQ challenging questions that hit the hard issues, making me feel like Martha Stewart before some panel of important people who know a lot about money, the guy started to just blatantly lie.
He said one thing that certainly could be true: He bought a green Mini Cooper S in 1966 for $2,300. This doesn't seem at all outrageous. I'm willing to accept this as fact. I'd feel better if he had been able to produce the car's birth certificate, or a fender, or anything demonstrating ownership, but the fact itself isn't so crazy that I wouldn't believe it even without any evidence.
What he told me next was that crazy. You might not think so, but then you might not be a car dork like I am.
He told me that he used to drag race other cars at stoplights. That's fine. I can accept that just as easily as I can the fact that he bought a Mini Cooper S in 1966 for $2,300. That's OK. Stoplight racing in a stock Mini Cooper S seems like a weird sissy thing to do, but it's still possible. I mean, he might have cleaned up in towns that had heavy moped populations, for example.
It's the cars he claimed to beat that had me wanting to "cross examine" him, or whatever it is that actors do to other actors on those fancy evening court dramas that are so popular right now (I hate those stupid shows - when did lawyers and doctors become the modern age equivalents of mythic heroes like Odysseus and Aeneus (not that I liked either of them, either - I hate all that stupid intellectual snob Greek/Latin crap)).
He claimed, get this, that he was racing Pontiac GTOs and beating them.
Oh, really.
He told me all about it.
"And then a'hd put 'er in seckhund and, dang, she jewst took off lahk a horse with a spurr in 'is ass."
OK. He didn't talk like that. I'm the one who's doing the lying now, but the lie is much more interesting than the reality, so let's just deal with it. I wish you'd get off my back. Jesus.
The problem, of course, is that 1966, if I recall correctly, was one of the years of the 389 Tri-Power engine for the GTO, and it made for quite a quick car. I don't remember the exact stats, but I'm fairly certain that the engine put out something around 350 horsepower with an ungodly amount of torque to go along with it.
The Mini, on the other hand, even the "high performance" "S" model, only put out about 2.8 horsepower (many people outfitted their Minis with extra beefy parts that pumped the engine up to double-digit horsepower numbers, but we're talking about stock Minis here - not those lightning fast hot-rodded deathtraps that could reach 60 in under a minute (maybe even without breaking down (or catching on fire))). You couldn't go uphill. If you came to a spot that looked uphill, you had to turn around and drive the other direction until you circumvented the entire globe, eventually winding up where you wanted to go, having driven downhill the entire way.
OK. That last part could only really happen in an M. C. Escher painting, but I'm trying to make this interesting. Could you just lay off with your constant nitpicking? Gawd.
So this guy wanted me to believe that he was racing GTOs and beating them in his stock Mini Cooper S.
He may have purchased it in 1966 for $2,300 and driven it off the showroom floor the same day, but, I promise you, he didn't beat any GTOs unless the other drivers happened to be dead. Even then, it'd be a struggle. A dead guy could fall on the gas pedal with enough gusto to clean up in a straight-line race. With the Turbo-Hydramatic automatic transmission that came in the Pontiacs of the time, he wouldn't even have to worry about shifting - the smoothest automatic transmission ever made would take care of everything for him.
The guy was a freaking liar, and he was lying right to my face.
All that said, I love these people. I'd never want to be one, and I never argue with them since I think they should be allowed to live out their little fantasies in the same way that I think people should be allowed to believe in astrology and think that mushrooms and pork are fit for human consumption, but they sure are fun to talk to.
It's just that their total lack of shame is really something. I'm impressed at how little they think other people know.
They really have some balls, anyway, if no grasp on reality.
Do you know people like this? I get the feeling that they might be an endless source of entertainment.