The Nature of Truth

Truth. You would think that such a nice little word would be so simple to define. The more I go along, the more I realize that truth is more slippery than an eel and more ephemeral than Jim Morrison's ghost. It's certainly harder to find than proof of Bigfoot's existence and more difficult to acquire than a good picture of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.

It always seems so subjective, too. What is truth to one person is simply a cover to another. One person might actually believe something that is false but accept is as truth. Does it make it any less true to that person? I suppose not.

I guess the real problem with such truths is when you try to apply your personal truths to other people...specifically, people who don't feel the same way... or people who simply "know better".

This reminds me of an incident from the "wilder" days of my youth. (Some would, of course, deny that my youth was truly wilder than my current life, but that's mere speculation and a topic for a different blog entry.) In any event, I got suspended from school. It was just an in school suspension for something really stupid, to be sure.

What was fascinating about this little tale is the word that spread about the reasons for my self-caused imprisonment. Some tales were simple - got busted with pot, cussed out a teacher, got into a fight. Other tales were much wilder, and usually combined the typical elements into something larger than life.

Far be it from reason to get in the way of such a tale.

This one cat named Ed - we called him Bucky cause we were cruel little bastards back in the day... really cruel... of course, he was really annoying and a bit of an asshole so we felt no need to revise the name, truth be known... and, again, there's that word - in any event, Bucky came up to me the day after I got out of "prison" and walked up to me and asked me how it felt. Of course, I asked him what the hell he was talking about and he unfolded this tale about what I had done.

He KNEW it to be absolutely TRUE regardless of what I told him.

Funny, you would think that I, of all people, would know the truth of the matter when it came to why I was in I.S.S., wouldn't you?

His tale went something like this:
The teachers insisted that they be allowed to search my locker because I was suspected of using or distributing drugs in school. This was a constant rumor held about me - I'm sure in part due to my half-asian eyes which gave me the look of someone constantly stoned. Well, as his tale claimed, I refused so the teacher grabbed me and shoved me against a locker. My response was to straight up slug the teacher in the face and as he was stumbling back I apparently pulled out this six inch blade, of which I owned none, and held him at bay with this knife. It seems I was a real bad-ass cause it took 2 cops and 3 teachers to finally take me down.

And for this I earned 3 days in In School Suspension.

Umm... say what? Methinks I would earn more like 1-5 years in Juvie or the state pen for that, no?

And like I said, no matter how I protested and told him that was not at all true, he insisted it was. Hell, he even went so far as to claim that he SAW it.

Unbelievable.

Seriously - he said he saw it. I wouldn't kid you about this... you can trust me to tell you the "truth"...

Now, how the hell do you only get 3 days I.S.S. for assault and battery, whipping out a deadly (and concealed) weapon, threatening the use of deadly force, and resisting arrest - not to mention the apparent multitudes of drug charges they were going to have against me? It's beyond me, I can tell you that much.

Now what was the truth? I got busted and sent to I.S.S. because I was late to school six times without a note to excuse my tardiness.

Truth is a funny thing. Kinda makes you wonder if there is anything true at all.
.
.