Old Ski-Do's and Tall Tales

Here's a photo of a friend's old snowmobile. My friend bought it used about 14 years ago, sold it, and hadn't seen it for years until this picture surfaced. We used to tell those who cared that the machine only drove in reverse. We also used to weave other tales about it. But these stories were all bullshit. The underlying factor determining the content of the lies was whether the latest story would be enjoyed by the listener. The content was also determined by a certain conscilience with other stories. The overarching theme providing the conscilience was based on us joking about our poor country boy experiences with a charmed sense of shame and pride common to rurality.

Now, the stories were enjoyed more than the ski-do. And, the ski-do now has a very nostalgic tie for me. This bothers me because the nostalgia is based on the ski-do but the ski-do's connection with bullshit has been replaced. The bullshot stories have overtime become true and meaningful. They have acquired a truth of sorts. We acted as if the stories were true and those stories helped define us.

This could be comparable to someone saying fake it until you got it. Pretend you are confident or the big shit and evetually it mat just become self fulfilling. The confidence, even if it was bullshitted confidence, became real as a memery and it helped forge the identity of the current self who in turn used those memories as proof he was a confident person, and in turn, became a real true confident person who no longer had to fake it.