Two truths and a lie

Yesterday at work they told me to prepare for a group meeting where I will be introduced to everyone. I’m supposed to tell them three things about myself. Two of which are true and one which is a lie. The group is to guess which is the lie.

This sounds like so much fun I’m going to prepare for it here. But since the readers of this blog know so much about me already or could easily search the blog for many of the answers I’m going to give you a bunch more truths to better hide the lie.

I’ll update this post with the answer in week or so. In the meantime post your guess in the comments.

  • When in grade school I had to milk the cows before and after going to school.
  • I went to grade school in a two room school with two teachers and eight grades.
  • I sometimes walked through snow drifts to get to grade school.
  • I first drove on a public road with the permission of my parents when I was 10 years old.
  • I used explosives to remove hundreds of tree stumps from fields before I was teenager.
  • In high school I figured out the combination to locker of the beautiful girl next to me so I could “borrow” her hard-core porn books but I was too shy to ever initiate a conversation with her.
  • I built an electronic alarm system for my high school locker.
  • I made contact sensitive explosives in high school and scattered tiny pieces on the hallway floor.
  • I have never illegally used any recreation drug except for that one glass of beer when I was 17.
  • As a college freshman three women invited me to drive to Montana with them where the drinking age was 18. They all got drunk and we shared one bed together but I was so shy I never so much as kissed any of them.
  • I won first place while playing for the University of Idaho chess team in the Association of College Unions Intercollegiate Tournaments in Region 14 (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana).
  • I had never drank any hard liquor until my girlfriend accidently switched glasses with me a few months ago.
  • I maintain three blogs and make at least one post each day.
  • I own an explosives production facility where I make about a ton of explosives each year for recreational purposes.
  • I wrote software for the CIA.
  • I took a training pistol from the chief instructor in a handgun retention class.
  • I went to Blackwater (a private military company and security consulting firm) for “summer camp” for free and was taught by one of the top handgun shooters in the world.

I think there are only two people in the world who I currently know that can identify with certainty which one is the lie.

Update: The lie is:

I won first place while playing for the University of Idaho chess team in the Association of College Unions Intercollegiate Tournaments in Region 14 (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana).

The truth is it was second place:

IMG_2525Cropped

The reason only two people I currently know who, “can identify with certainty which one is the lie” are Barb L. and Barb S. Barb S. because she was around when I played in the tournament. Barb L. because she could have looked in the trophy case to confirm or deny my claim. My kids never paid much attention to my trophy case and I have lost contact with all the other people in that tournament.

The comments to this post were some of the most fun I have had on this blog.

In answer to Ubu52 who doubted I had built the electronic alarm for my locker here is a picture of the remnants of it I found in one of my recently unpacked boxes:

WP_20150402_001WP_20150402_002

It has a single silicon controlled rectifier so it is electronic. The magnetic reed switch is for turning it off. There was another reed switch for triggering the alarm after a delay created by the resistors and capacitors. But I replaced the reed switch with just a couple of bare wires after someone used a huge (something like 25 pound) horseshoe magnetic on the outside of the locker to trigger it. The Sonalert was a new product on the market then and I used one of those for the sound producing device. It was eventually used in a different project of mine and I don’t know if I even have it any more.

And repeating for completeness this is the picture of the girl, Mary Ann, with the locker next to mine which I “borrowed” the porn from when I had the alarm in my locker:

Mary Ann

As far as the consumption of alcohol and other recreational drugs all the things I said are true. I’m even pretty sure that Barb switching the glasses on me was an accident.

The one glass of beer I had when I was 17 was my first day of college when I fell to the peer pressure, felt bad about it during and after, and didn’t do that again.

It was interesting the response my kids had to this post. Xenia hasn’t said anything about reading it but James and Kim both had the chess story and the three girls in Montana story on their short list. Kim correctly suspected that one of the women was the much older half sister of one James’ best friends in high school who was, eventually, the first girl I ever kissed (she is now college literature and women’s studies professor in a long term lesbian relationship–just so you know the sort of damage kissing me can inflict). Either I never told James about that or he forgot it. When I started to tell him about last week he cut me off as it being just too weird.

Share

45 thoughts on “Two truths and a lie

  1. I have never illegally used any recreation drug except for that one glass of beer when I was 17.

    That has gotta be BS.

  2. Gotta be “As a college freshman three women invited me to drive to Montana with them where the drinking age was 18. They all got drunk and we shared one bed together but I was so shy I never so much as kissed any of them. ”

    Clue: “I think there are only two people in the world who I currently know that can identify with certainty which one is the lie.”

    He only kept in touch with the two hottest girls!

  3. “I went to grade school in a two room school with two teachers and eight grades.”

    It does not fit with some of the comments you have made about your education when you were young.

  4. I’m going to go with this one: “◾I built an electronic alarm system for my high school locker.”

    It’s possible you built an alarm system but I doubt it was electronic.

    • That one would be among my last guesses. It’s just the sort of thing I could see Joe doing.

      • I could see it too, but I’m not so sure the technology existed at that time. We’re talking early 1970s.

        • In ’71 I had an alarm that could fit in a VW hub cap and detect a person within 2 feet. It was home made, but not by me. Little kid down the street thought it was the coolest thing in the world to let the air out of our tires. Scared the crap out of him.

          • I was! And what’s even funnier is that I lived in a high tech area with silicon chips and everything! Plenty of scientists!

            The thing is, I just went around with a “kid” who talked about a cellphone video shot in the early ’90s….

    • Yeah, I’m thinking he only played with two, because the third was too drunk to wake up, and therefore not worthy of attention.

  5. What high school girl would have hard core porn? That’s the one that has to be BS.

  6. I’m guessing stump removal – they would have already cleared the land.
    Or chess – you’ve never talked about it at all, and most major chess nerds keep with it…. but then, there’s a lot of things you don’t talk about, I suspect.

      • I was just guessing on the triple-reverse psych – it’s the “obvious” things an an explosives-maker and nerd would do, so it can be lied about with the expectations people will believe you. Pretty impressive list, all in all.

  7. My guess: “I had never drank any hard liquor until my girlfriend accidently switch glasses with me a few months ago.”

    This one could potentially only be known to be false by two people who witnessed a previous incident.

  8. Based on the blog about the hats the other day, I’d say the last item. All the rest feel plausible. You’re quite a character, Joe. Some of those entries remind me of me in high school, but many of them are only things I would have dreamed about doing but never actually did.

  9. I’m guessing the switched glass- The statement that it was an accident, she REALLY did it on purpose!

      • Like I said, they’re all plausible. I’m gonna laugh my ass off if it’s the three blogs one. I only know of two. Do you run a secret tumblr you haven’t told anyone about?

        • I can’t imagine the second one you know about. Even my son didn’t know of more than one.

          • The only other one that I knew about you shut down a couple years back. It was probably a work of fiction.

          • There was at least one other at one time. I admit I didn’t pay much attention to it and you may not have it any more. I didn’t check.

          • Does than mean we have our answer, or that you have one or two very seceret blogs?

  10. Joe was actually 11 when he drove the first time. Or, he only had to milk the cows before school, not after.

    • Learned to drive when I was 10. Drove on my own on county roads at 12.

      Country kids.

  11. Has to be the switched glass. That fits the two person criteria. You carefully didn’t say two other persons. Plus there are three ways that can be a lie. It didn’t happen. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t the first time.

  12. Pingback: The one lie | The View From North Central Idaho

Comments are closed.