Fact or Fiction: Blog Gang

My post is a little late - sorry y'all! I finally had to threaten my computer with a sledgehammer to get it to work right for me!

Anywho - today I'm supposed to be writing on the topic, "Fact or Fiction". To be honest, I've been trying to think this one through in my head for two weeks, and I just keep ending up at a wall. On that note, I'm just going to wing it, and hope for the best!

Here's the basics:

• Fact = something that can be proven to be true, beyond any reasonable doubt.
• Fiction = an embellishment of a fact, or a made up story for entertainment.

(Ok, ok - I didn't pull those out of the dictionary. Those are just my basic views of what the two words mean, ok? I'm writing this damn blog...don't like what I say? Go write your own! lol)

Ever watched a court show on TV? Or been in court? (If not, what rock did you just crawl out from under?) Remember all the lawyers/actors always going on about, "The FACTS of the case are blah, blah, blah." Uhmmm...yeah...most of them weren't FACTS. They were someone's version of the truth. Unless there is a video and audio recording of the event, don't count on what you are told as being the FACTS.

Don't believe me? Say you witness an accident on Main Street, USA between a red Ford truck and a blue Chevy car. This to you is a fact, right? Well, to the witness across the road who says the facts are: A maroon Ford F150 pick-up with white pinstripes, ran into the teal Chevrolet Camaro, your version is not a fact, it's bits and pieces of it. The 26 year old driving the aqua Chevy will claim that the truck looked like a Ford F250, and had red paint with beige stripes down the side.

Ever sat there with a friend and heard them tell a story about the time you two got drunk? You know damn good and well there was no bar fight, and that you are the one that drove home. However, in their version, you were both involved in some major altercation, and you were so drunk you couldn't even walk to the car. Are they intentionally lying? Probably not. But once the story starts to be told, your friend may remember some little thing about the night that you don't. In your friends mind, it was a HUGE deal, and it's what they remember most. You don't remember it that way. Who's the one telling the fact, and who's telling the fiction? Trust me, after a few years of the same story, you're going to start to wonder yourself if your version of the facts is in actuality the fiction.

What I'm trying to get at is this: While you may fully believe you are telling the facts of what you saw or did, you are in all actuality telling your version of the facts, with a little bit of fiction thrown in. It's human nature. We embellish. We all remember different things about the same event. Why do you think cops try to get as many witness statements as possible? It's so that HOPEFULLY out of 15 stories they can find enough that say the same things here and there. They, in turn, write down the similarities as "Fact".

And y'all wonder why, 40+ years later, we still don't know who shot JFK....