Fact and Fiction

I like the sound of words and combinations of them. Sometimes I’m not even sure what they mean. They just sound good. Worse than wonder is like that. It suggests something great and terrible. The other side of awe. I didn’t come up with it; my Uncle did. He was visiting from Germany, a mini reunion of sorts. We were in the hotel bar, getting drunk while waiting to join my mom. I think my sister was there too.

Uncle Calvin was a great storyteller. He had, as they say, a way with words. He was telling us about his father, my grandfather, watching the moon landing on TV. Apparently it completely unmoored him and all he could do was shake his head and mutter, “It’s worse than wonder, worse than wonder.”

I’ve always been struck by that story and his father’s words. But it turns out, it’s not at all true. I never thought to examine the facts of it, but if you do, it couldn’t have happened. His father died of a heart attack ten years before the moon landing.

So what did happen? And who said it? I’m not sure that it matters.

My family has never really cared much for facts. Facts are facts—dull and dry—but a story is the dream world where anything can happen. Completely different, in their eyes, even for “true” stories. I said “their” instead of “our” because I fall somewhere in between. As a kid, I loved facts—they were the truth—and I couldn’t stand it if anybody messed with them. My brother, knowing this, loved to taunt me by saying outlandish, impossible things.

“I bet, right now, there are only two people talking on the phone at the same time,” He would casually say.

(I always took the bait.)

“That’s so stupid!” I would reply, “Of course, there are more than two people talking at the same time.”

“Nope, only two.”

“But, like, when you’re talking on the phone … don’t you think somebody else, like Ty or Mark or our neighbors, might also be talking to someone at the same time!”

“Just two.”

“How could you be so crazy and so DUMB!” I would shout, getting worked up now, “There’s probably thousands of people talking on the phone right now! Millions!”

And on and on, it would go, until I would stomp out of the room. I just didn’t get it.

We’re prone to exaggeration too. If anyone has a cold, they’re dying. If someone didn’t get a full night’s sleep, “I’ve been up for DAYS!” It made me skeptical. I’d just assume that something happened, but to the left of the scale, and I think it fostered in me a “wait and see” approach.

“Have you talked to your sister?”

“No. Why, what’s up?”

“Oh my God, they’ve had so much rain, the whole yard is flooded. It’s probably leaked into the house. I’m sure the floors are finished!”

Wait and see. With so many disasters afoot, you had to protect yourself somehow. In the end, I lost some faith in the facts of situations, sometimes in the meanings of words altogether. Just because she said it, doesn’t mean it’s true. Wait and see.

And, of course, sometimes bad things really did happen. Terrible things that made you suck in your breath. There were amazing things too, too beautiful to imagine. And I knew it by the tone, by the sound of the words. You couldn’t wait and see. It was there and it was worse than wonder.