Tall Tale Telling 吹牛

"What do you think the item in the above picture is?

A pipe! Yes, but it is no ordinary pipe. It's a Knowledge Instilling Pipe, KIP for short, a new product my team is working on. When it is released, none of us will need to work hard to learn anything any more. Learning will rather be something that we don't even feel. We will be able to enjoy life all our waking seconds long, and KIP will absorb the knowledge and skills that we want and fill them into our brain and body while we sleep."

This was the final speech I gave a couple of years ago in a communications class that I was taking from my local community college. Each student in the class was both the seller of their own product and a potential buyer of others'. The one who got the most buyers would be the winner, with the restriction that each person was allowed to buy at most three products, all from other students. In this class there were about twenty students from all walks of life and of all different age and ethnitics. Some of them made use of a simple item such as a backpack or an itch scratcher into up to ten uses; Some made tasty cocktail drinks out of simple ingredients; A flight attendant, who is also an opera singer, brought homemade lemon bars which were the most delicious I have ever tried so far. In the end, as you already guessed, I, the worst English public speaker, won.

The main idea? Language and speech skills are not the most decisive factors in real life. Creativity and uniqueness are.

我在这里讲过很多故事，以前有的老朋友说我吹牛，好听点儿叫会编故事。其实，我以前讲过的全都是真实事件，虽然没有谦虚，但也没有夸张或更改过。既然我讲真事儿的时候有人听着象假的，估计我吹起牛来，反而特有真实感。这个知识灌取器，是我十二岁时就有了的一个梦想，当然后来知道很多人都做过或还在做着同样的梦。这可能也是我上面这个约半分钟的推销（要不是被大家的笑声多次打断，还用不了这么久）成功的原因。我在这个课上遇到了不少有趣的人，一个非常好的老师，最后还非常成功地吹了一次牛。更重要的是，它帮助我克服了完美主义和怯懦心，“包子有肉不在褶上”，英语也不例外。