Last night I had a casual dinner around the corner from my apartment with an acquaintance/friend of mine and two friends of his. We're the sort of friends that need to be in the mood to hang out, but when we do, we really like each other, except when we don't.My acquaintance/friend Dan orders a bottle of wine for the table and we start talking, rather, they start talking.
"Kara just got her PhD in Anthropology at Brown," says Dan.
"Well, not quite yet, I'm still working on my dissertation, but it's coming along well," responded Kara.
"Ah, my fiance is planning to study Anthropology or Middle Eastern Studies at Colombia," piped Vivienne.
Brown . . . Columbia . . . I still can't spell the school or the country.
"Oh, I have some great friends at Columbia still. In fact, Sylvia's teaching there, no?" Kara chirped back in.
And on and on the conversation went. While Kara and Dan reminisced about Columbia, Vivienne found the opportunity to ask me about my education.
"Ah, I went to FIT," I replied and quickly changed the subject. I now felt, to put it bluntly, stupid.
"No, no, no, that's where you went wrong," my roommate shared with me upon arriving home and sharing my short story. "You should have just lied."
We started out with casual ideas. "Say you went to Yale or some West Coast school," my roommate suggested.
But then the gears really started moving.
I could say anything. I got my MBA at Stern's immediately following my Bachelor's from FIT. I went to medical school when I was a pre-teen. I was inspired my the heroin addiction that overcame me at the age of 9. The series 'Doogie Howser' was based on my life. I performed my first surgery at 15. I was Elizabeth Taylor's one and only wife. I found the cure for Polio. I lived in a polyamorist community in Washington State but smoked away my millions, the first of which I made with more than a few McDonald's franchises before I was 21. I fought the French for a small island known as Reunion a few years ago and won.
Wish I had it in me to lie sometimes.
2 comments:
I seriously lie about my education every week. FIT and the finance world don't really go hand in hand. :)
but then once in a while I'm talking to someone in the fashion industry and then I'm a hero.
God, I love being European. I can be vague about it - "oh me? Well, I studied in Stockholm... and Prague...", and you people gobble it up, no follow-ups!
Old world snoot. It's priceless.
Post a Comment