Most of us tend to cover up the truth when we show up in public with a black eye or are limping, or have a bandaged thumb.

Elaborate stories are concocted, but usually, the real truth comes out.

I think of a young couple that had a terrific argument one morning before they both left for work. She couldn’t get her dress zipped up in back and asked for his help.

Hurried himself, he brusquely zipped it up and down so fast the zipper broke. He had to cut her out of her favorite dress, and that didn’t make her very happy.

When she got home that evening, she walked through the garage and saw her husband under the car with legs sticking out, fixing something. She decided to get revenge.

She leaned down, grabbed his pant’s zipper and zipped it up and down several times. She then walked into the kitchen where she found her husband making coffee.

He told her he was making it for the neighbor who had come over to help him fix the car.

She and her husband went to the garage where, embarrassed though she was, she planned to apologize. When they tried to coax the neighbor out from under the car, he didn’t respond.

They grabbed his legs and pulled him out. He was unconscious and bleeding from the forehead after slamming his head on the car frame when he got zippered by surprise.

Then there was the man with the broken arm. He said he fell.  

But the real story was that after his wife brought a potted plant in from the patio one day, a snake slithered out and scared the bejeebers out of her.  

He was in the bathtub at the time and heard her scream. He jumped out of the tub to help and didn’t even bother to grab a towel to wrap himself in.  

He ran naked into the living room to see his wife pointing to the sofa. She said there was a snake under it. He got down on hands and knees to look and just then the family dog came up and cold-nosed him.

He thought it was the snake and fainted. His wife thought he’d had a heart attack and called the ambulance. Just as the EMTs were lifting him on to the stretcher, the snake came out from under the sofa.

The medic nearest the sofa jumped back and dropped his end of the stretcher. The guy broke his arm in the fall.

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