Big Fish

I asked my mom once why she loved my dad so much. He made a lot of mistakes, yet she kept on loving him. I didn't understand.

She said it was because he made her laugh. Something about the way he'd tell a story tongue-in-cheek, or make a silly pun, or drop a one-liner that made her smile. She didn't have much else in the way of explanation, and I never asked her again.

Dad told us kids that he once drove a tank during World War II (he was a zygote at the time, so I'll leave the logistics to your comprehension). He also told us he carried the torch in the Olympics (that probably would've put him in Munich).

Perhaps the grandaddy of them all (no pun intended) was when he told me that my great-grandfather, Christopher Columbus King, was actually Christopher Columbus. You know, the 15th century explorer.

I was in elementary school. Naturally, I went to school and told my teacher and all my friends.

Yeah, that wasn't a good day, but now that I'm older, I appreciate the joke. I'm totally telling my kid the same.

Those three stories immediately come to mind. Dad never had much in the way of details, but he did tell us tall tales. I struggle to remember them now. So does he.

I think perhaps I should get him to re-tell us so I can write them down and pass them along, or at least commit them to memory and re-tell them later, which is what worked with my grandfather.

My grandfather used to tell us kids about a red-tailed monkey that lived in his house. Whenever we kids were acting up or getting into something, Grandpa Dave would tell us, "You'd better not — the red-tailed monkey will get you."

We lived in fear of this fabled red-tailed monkey for years. Then again, we kept our butts on the couch when we visited.

I suppose now you can call that "psychological abuse," but I turned out fine. Probably. Maybe I'm damaged.

Maybe I warned a friend's kid recently about the red-tailed monkey that lives at my house. Call it "keeping my grandfather's stories alive."

Big Fish toys with the themes of eternal life through storytelling, and being bigger than life through tall tales. Without stories, how else do we remember people after they're gone? And who says we can't expand upon the truth if the facts aren't enough to reflect how much we love someone?