the tall tales of sir Matthew Stuart Harrington

This is the story of Big Fish. If you recall, the aforementioned Tim Burton tall tale relates the over the top adventures full of hyper-bole storytelling with a big heart. Yup, my brother Mathew Stuart…so unlikely to be one of the greatest liars of our time. This is a collection of some of mine and my fam’s greatest memories concerning his stories.

Note that none of these (with the exception of perhaps the lie to the cat…more on that later) had actual malice but were filled with good intentions. It is important to note that most of these fibs were bent on getting others excited for something that matt liked. Now after many a year, these stories make for great memories, and without further ado…

Ok so lets go back a long time and start with the first one I know of. This happened a long time ago, when I was dead (before February of 1985). In an effort to get my sister Nia excited for school, Matt informed her of a very exciting attribute of the school bus: Every seat had a steering wheel. It was a shameful lie that must have been quite disappointing when discovered by my sis. The design of such a bus is pretty fantastic and it’s easy to see why the story has been passed down for generation.

Not sure if this is before or after I was born but our next tale takes place in Vermont (oh Larry Daryl and Daryl:) . Again the story involved my sister, but this time with a twist. The victim of the lie was an evil cat my grandma had at the time. The Siamese cat was always bad news, but for some reason Nia was able to tame the lil guy for a bit. Matt naturally got jealous and went to extremes. You see the cat was accustomed to fine dining (wet cat food), and knew the sound of the can opener (an object that Matt always liked). Anyways, after some quick thinking, Matt turned on the can opener. The result was fairly instantaneous…the cat jumped of Nia’s lap and ran to the kitchen only to find out he had been the victim of a great deceit. As I mentioned, the cat was evil, and Matt paid the consequence. A very angry cat cornered my bro and there might have been tears involved. But I’ll end it there J

Ok fast forward a bit. Besides scaring me by saying sharks could come out of the bath faucet, another lie comes pretty high to the top of the list. Jaws was not only a great and terrifying movie, it was a huge franchise in our family (well with Matt and I anyways) We enjoyed the movie along with the good sequel (with the powerline electrifying the poor shark), and average 3 (was it a bomb that killed him then?) and the terrible Jaws: The Revenge "this time its personal" (less said the better). Again we enjoyed them all and loved the Nintendo game even more. The game was sweet, full of submarines, lil sharks, rays, jellyfish, and of course the great white shark himself. With 0 basis whatsoever, Matt got me excited for what I thought was an inevitable sequel to the game (turns out the rest of the world didn’t love the video game, a true shame since it still holds up today as a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but I digress…) The key feature he hyped up: hammerhead sharks! Haha, yup never a sequel, but I still want to play Jaws 2 to this day J

Alrighty, moving on a little bit. I won’t retell the excitement hyped up for Battlefield Earth since that wasn’t really a lie, but I will tell the tale of The Elder Scrolls 3. Arena: The Elder Scrolls 1 was a fantastic game. It was huge, had a well developed mythology and was a groundbreaking rollplaying game. The sequel Daggerfall might just be the most played game in the Harrington family (competing with Civilization 2) since Nate Matt and I played it for hours on end. Upgrading to Ebony or Daedric armor and weapens, casting powerful magic, joining the thieves guild, roaming the countryside… all classic times. You could even buy a house and have a horse. Anyways, it was awesome. But Matt knew what the Elder Scrolls 3 needed: ride-able flying fire breathing dragons. Yup I fell for that one too. But jokes on him: fast forward 15 years and the Elder Scrolls 5 might be the ticket. One can only hope…

Anyways, I'm sure there are plenty more where these came from... I just wanted to start the discussion and document the ones that came to my mind. Please comment and add more if you remember any more lively tales. (also this was a big detour of the usual subject matter, i'll stay on target next time)