Family of Liars

Cover of E. Lockhart novel

“Family is the cradle of misinformation.”

Don DeLillo

My Father died from smoking. That was what we were told. He had donated his body to science, and Science then told us that he had died from smoking. His death was now part of their statistics.

The only problem was that dear old Dad had quit smoking almost 40 years prior to his demise. Since he was 84 when he died, he must have quit in the mid Sixties. If we assume that he started smoking in his teens, then he had smoked for about 30 years.

“No one is allowed to leave the building.”

Don DeLillo

My Mother quit smoking in the Sixties, when she was in her Forties. She had fallen asleep in her chair, perhaps watching TV, with a burning cigarette in her hand. She woke. Was the chair burning? No one talked about that, only that on the floor above her, there were seven sleeping children. She quit cold Turkey.

My father also quit smoking in his Forties. Reportedly he woke up in a hotel room, feeling like crap from drinking the previous night. Drinking and smoking. He made the hard decision that he had to quit something ~ either drinking or smoking.

So he quit smoking.

It is my task in the world to believe in things no one else believes.

Don DeLillo

I heard that it was a Wolf Moon this past week. Every few months it is another special full moon. The Wolf Moon. A Smoky Whisper Moon. The Memory Moon. Sparkle Moon. Sailor Moon. #therealmoon

We are calling the latest variant of Covid” the Kraken.” It was named by the people who name such things. Everything has special names these days. The waves are not just a high tide; they are a King Tide. The weather in the summer was not real hot, it was a Heat Dome. The arctic weather front in the Midwest is not just a really big snow storm, it a Snow Cyclone Bomb. It’s like the people in charge of Weather took a two week Bartending Class and decided they liked inventing cocktails. Better yet, naming cocktails, an extension of the What Should We Name Our New Band game.

A Family Of Liars

My Favourite Daughter

It was a joke. An inside joke. She was a teenager but I was responsible for driving her to school. We were late. Again. She was going to be late.  I told her not to worry, we’ll make it. She said “We are a Family of Liars.” Later she had the phrase tattooed on her body. We thought that was cool, because we are cool parents. Humour and inside jokes are a big part of our family communication.

“Family is the cradle of misinformation. Again. “

Don DeLillo

My Father loved to tell stories. He was very good at it. I remember him saying to never let truth get in the way of a good story. I thought he came up with that. Later, after he died, I discovered that Mark Twain was the actual originator of the phrase. That is the truth. Except Mark Twain wasn’t his real name. It was Sam. Then again my Dad’s father’s name was Sam. Was Mark Twain my grandfather?  Twain died in 1910. My grandfather was born in 1895. My father was born in 1922. Do the math.

My wife loves dogs.I love my wife. Therefore, I love dogs. This is a fact that can be proven by mathematics.

A=B, B=C, A=C

It is called the Communicative Theory of Mathematics. Except when fact checking, I discovered that I had it all wrong. I forgot the real name of the theory, which is the Transitive Property of Equality. It is not even a theory, only a property. You see how the mind plays tricks. A real trickster, the mind. For years I have called this property a Theory.  Not a transitive property but a communicative theory. And what about equality?

So I went down the rabbit hole….

While there is no Communicative Theory of Mathematics, there is a Communicative Principle, which notes that utterances create expectations of optimal relevance. It is part of the Theory of Relevance.

Smart people study this stuff. Beyond talking and saying what may or may not be the truth, there is a whole science of utterances, which defines how we interpret what is relevant and presumably irrelevant. From literal and non-literal utterances, we have what is technically called “loose language”, which includes hyperbole, and metaphor.

Smart people use relevance theory to explain irony, which to me….is rather ironic.

Please note: The Theory of Relevance has nothing to do with the Theory of Relativity, or Theo Fleury, whose Twitter posts make you wish he hadn’t been slammed into the boards so many times. Concussions are real Theo. Trudeau is not a communist, even though his dad was Fidel Castro.