Embellish

I’m reading a wonderfully funny, bawdy book called, My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler—good light summer read about her one-night stands. Because she knew they would only last one night, she would “embellish” her life history to match whatever the man might be looking for. For example—

“The next morning he rolled over and asked, ‘So, does your dad actually own American Airlines?’ I turned over so that I wasn’t facing him and cringed. ‘Yeah, why? Do you want to go somewhere?’”

I still laugh out loud when I think of this ... the ultimate example of embellishment. That got me thinking, of course.

An official definition of the word, embellish, is:

 1. To make beautiful, as by ornamentation; decorate.
 2. To add ornamental or fictitious details to a fanciful account that embellishes the true story.

I like both definitions—like lying while wearing too much jewelry. That appeals to me, but here’s the thing … as a liar, I suck! That’s a problem, I know. You may not think so, but sometimes one should lie if the only other choice is to hurt someone’s feelings, right? I don’t even do that well.

When your boss catches something you did or didn’t do, you MUST lie under those circumstances in order to maintain the semblance of your perfect record to that point—or your job. I did this a time or two with my last employer, and as I lied to his face, I could see on his face that he knew I was lying, but was willing to go along with it in order to play the “human” game that we all play every day. What a gem he was! He knew I was embellishing because of the red in my cheeks and the laser-eyed look I gave him, which was out of the norm. We would dance the dance and he would always let me save face, so that worked out great.

If you say that you’ve never embellished your resume, I’ll be forced to call you a damn liar. It’s amazing how much responsibility you can add to the role of receptionist. By the time you’re ready to send out that resume, your receptionist duties far exceed anything that the CEO might have on his resume, and your “work from home” job description is a doozy when all you were really doing was chasing little Tommy with the snotty nose. As a former “medical transcriptionist” who worked from home, I might as well have been a real doctor for all the embellished duties that wound up on my resume. All the while in my pajamas typing boring medical histories between Ellen DeGeneres’s guests.

I say, what would life be without embellishments of all kinds? Go ahead, wear too much jewelry while lying your ass off. You’re not alone!—KK