Have you ever had one of these?

I work with this guy who has to be the best. He cannot stand it if someone has done something or been somewhere if he isn’t allowed to tell a story in which he’s done something more exciting or been somewhere more exotic. To hear him tell it, he is superman.

If he hears me talking about my trip to Turkey, he will say he’s been to Afghanistan. Under cover. And he’s infiltrated a Taliban cell. And they still send him postcards. If someone says they’ve jumped out of an airplane, he’s done so blindfolded. Without a parachute. If you’ve broken a bone, he has not only broken that same bone, but it has pierced through the skin, wrapped around his body and punctured the kidney on the opposite side. And he was up and walking two days later. He’s also apparently won hundreds of thousands of dollars playing poker.

I kind of feel sorry for the guy because he clearly doesn’t realize that people see right through him, and that they laugh behind his back. He obviously does not credit others with much intelligence. He’s the kind of guy who calls all women “honey”.

It’s really kind of sad that he thinks people won’t like him unless he embellishes his life to such an extreme degree. He must really not like himself very much. He definitely lacks pride and confidence, although he must assume that we all perceive him as the most confident person on earth.

If even one tenth of his stories were true, then why is he an underpaid bridgetender who lives with his mother? It defies logic. So we let him talk about his naked skinny-dipping in piranha-infested waters, because we all realize that it’s probably the only pleasure he gets out of life.