Proust Questionnaire. Guest Blogger Stephen Andrew Jones

 

So glad you like my guest blog series! I am so appreciative that my friends are up for this challenge. Also, thank you for all of your answers as well! My answer to the question is simple. My favorite literary hero in fiction is Miss Piggle-Wiggle. I learned more about “doing the right thing” from Miss Piggle Wiggle than I did from my parents, my school teachers, my Sunday school teachers, my sports coaches, and any self-help book combined! I devoured the books when I was a kid.

Okay, on to the next question and today’s guest blogger! Our favorite… Stephen Andrew Jones! If you read my blog, you should be well aware of this gentleman. If not, go to his blog, HERE, start from the beginning and when you finish every blog that he has ever written you will fall in love as the rest of us have and understand our obsession.
Okay, here we go…

Proust Question for Stephen: On what occasion do you lie?

Stephen’s Answer: Well, I lie constantly.  How much butter is in this? Oh! hardly any! Is that your second g&t? Oh, gosh, no.  It's my first. Tell me the truth, do you like my new couch? Of course! It really pulls the room together.

There's a lot of fucking butter and you know it, it’s my third gin and tonic and mind your own business I'm not driving, and that sofa is so ugly I have PTSD. I will readily lie to put a contentious situation at ease, protect someone's feelings, or protect individuality/creativity. Other than that, I'm much more of an omitter than a liar. As a middle child and a relatively calm Taurus, I am a skilled peacekeeper. Part of keeping the peace is spackling together a narrative with input from both assholes while driving it somewhere else. If she says I'm sorry he's such a braindead jackass and he says I'm sorry but I did nothing wrong, then you tell him she said she was sorry and tell her he said he recognizes his fault in this and is sorry. I think you can spend a lot of time debating the truth and get nowhere or you can cleverly fluff details and move on.

Also I tend to lie to men a lot more than women. I think in a broad scope, men are more comfortable being lied to. Truth be told, men don't really care what happens around them as long as there's food and blowjobs. Women, on the other hand, will sniff out the truth and find it eventually. So I've always found it's best to give them the whole story. Also, women have better memories of conversations. Perhaps because they listen. You can go back later and tell a man you said something different and provide a few plucked from oblivion details and nod strongly and he'll be like uh, yeah, that's right. 

I will also lie to wade through bureaucracy. When I was in high school, there was a miserable woman in charge of attendance. Imagine Ted Cruz with less zest for life. This woman was determined to hold my feet to the fire for skipping school as I saw fit. Listen, I'm not saying education isn't important but I am saying going tanning and collecting jadeite are more important. One of my routines was to leave for school on time, hit the tanning salon when it opened at 8, then drive to a small town called Lebanon and sift the antique stores. At the school in the morning, there was a parent volunteer to help attendance bitch with answering calls from parents to report their kid's absence. I would call the school from the tanning salon phone or the carryout next-door until I got attendance bitch, then speed dial the school on my cell phone so I'd get sweet volunteer mom. My junior year, she caught me and screwed me over when I called impersonating my dad. I got volunteer mom as planned and she said just a moment, please and I heard attendance bitch's shrill voice. Andrew, I know it's you. I should have given up there but I insisted No. This is Dr. Jones. (my dad would literally sooner die than address himself to anyone as Dr. Jones. His patients hardly even call him that). She said well do you mind if I call your house to verify? Uuugh fuck. In about two seconds, I got an irate call from my dad. My poor parents. She may have won the battle. Over the summer, I did not do my summer reading but I did acquaint myself with privacy laws and regulations regarding schools and doctor’s offices. I'm not going to come out and admit to anything buuut I found a loophole and jumped through it regularly with abandon and attendance bitch couldn't do a damn thing. 

Nowadays, I would say the most frequent lies I tell involve my idea of being gracious and kind. There are some people who are so proud to tell you that they can't even lie if they try. Congratufuckinglations. 

 

When someone asks for your opinion, more often than not they are asking for your approval. When someone shows me their remodeled kitchen and asks do you think I chose the right countertops? Because I have a narrow view of what I love in a kitchen (non-Ellie approved white quartz), usually I do not. What could possibly be gained from me being a douche and saying “No”, that granite looks like geologic schizophrenia? The person is asking for reassurance, not your personal design philosophy. My rule is if it's too late for the truth to be helpful, lie. If someone put their heart and soul into a creative outlet like a painting, remodel, party, poem, or erotic e-book and it's finished, your constructive criticism is actually just rude. And I will always politely lie in a group to bypass someone's embarrassment. 

And lastly, certainly the most difficult lie to tell. The one that haunts my dreams and rattles me to the core. Oh don't worry about it! It's fine! I have a million of these and love shopping for more anyway! I am, of course, talking about when someone drops one of your plates or glasses. Give me strength, Lord. I buy beautiful tabletop goods to use and enjoy. Sometimes that means they are loved to death.  Even if you detest the dropper and wonder if it was an accident at all and are about to stroke out in rage--you must cry on the inside but laugh on the outside, sweep it up, assure the dipshit asshole motherfucker that it's no big deal, pour them a new glass, and keep your party on track. For God's sake, have some decorum.

Thank you, Stephen!

Ellie’s Question: Stephen, what is your favorite charity?

Stephen's Answer: ASPCA. https://www.aspca.org/