Truth is delicate, but it survives

Unlike Brian Williams, I am pretty sure I would remember whether or not I was in a helicopter that was shot down.
But ever since the NBC News anchor ran afoul of his embroidered stories, I’ve found myself wondering if I’ve ever accidentally done anything similar.
After all, who among us hasn’t told a story or anecdote so many times that it becomes more dramatic or our place in the story more heroic?
How tall were those snow drifts? Did you actually walk to school in sub-zero temperatures? Uphill? Both ways?
(Just for the record, I did walk to school in sub-zero temperatures as a kid. But the thermometer had risen above zero in the afternoon. And in Jay County, “uphill” is more of a theoretical concept than a reality most of the time.)
Perhaps what led Brian Williams astray was the overseas nature of his experiences. After all, if you are riding in a helicopter convoy in Iraq at a time of war, there is already something dramatically exciting about the experience, something outside the routine for most Americans.
It ought to have been enough to have said he was riding along with U.S. troops in a helicopter convoy, but something in his nature wanted to add some extra sauce and extra cheese and extra adventure to the experience.
If his goal had been to be the most interesting person at the dinner table, he simply could have told the truth. But he wanted to be more than that.
Have I ever done that? I wondered. I don’t think so, but I sensed that it was a human enough failing that I am unlikely to be immune.
One recent morning not long after the Williams fiasco began playing out in the news, I found myself dozing intermittently as I woke up.
A road trip in the Republic of Georgia kept coming to mind. It was 2000 or 2001, and I was working on a project for the International Center for Journalists. At one point, I was dispatched from Tblisi to a small town called Chokhatauri in the western Guria region to do a seminar.
I wasn’t on my own, but I was the only American. I was accompanied by the local ICFJ staffer, Marina, along with an interpreter and our driver, Mischa. It was, I must admit, pretty heady stuff. An exotic experience for a kid raised on Pleasant Street.
At some point, as Mischa drove through the gorges and ravines, we took a break for lunch. We stopped at a little inn that resembled something from the Brothers Grimm.
Inside, there was a dangerous-looking wood stove that looked as if it had been built in a seventh grade sheet metal shop. And outside, there was a bear.
It wasn’t a big bear. It was a cub. And it was in a cage.
From a humane society standpoint, it was awful. And it wasn’t something I would ever approve of.
But it wasn’t my country, and it wasn’t my culture.
Just the same, I found myself wondering in a state of half sleep: What’s to prevent me from making this a more interesting story?
What’s to prevent me from saying that I released the bear cub in the spirit of animal rights?
What’s to prevent me from saying the bear wasn’t a cub at all but a full-grown beast that broke out of its cage?
What’s to prevent me from saying that I grabbed a shashlik skewer and killed the animal on the spot?
Well, there’s nothing to prevent me from saying that.
Except that none of it is true.
And yet — and this is where Brian Williams seems to have stumbled — it was all so far away.
I was the only American there. Who is going to surface to challenge my account of slaying a giant bear with a shashlik skewer?
It was all a long time ago, and maybe Marina and Mischa and the interpreter can’t remember the details of my heroism. But maybe they can’t deny it either.
Truth is a delicate commodity. Time damages it. Distance damages it. Ego damages it. But, as Brian Williams has been reminded, it survives.