“Preverification”
Coffee is perfect this morning. Three origins, three roast profiles, a long pour, two minutes of rest. I lift the cup, breathe it in, and start laughing.
The coffee is innocent. The memory is guilty.
I’m a wordsmith. I say it with pride. I have spent a lifetime collecting words, polishing them, and placing each one with care. I invent words, too. Neologism is sport for me.
I am also a phenomenologist. I study experience as we live it, moment by moment, from the inside. So here is an experience, lived from the inside …
A writer is interviewing me. The conversation is going beautifully. We arrive at storytelling, my favorite subject, and I lean in, warm and confident, ready to share one of my deepest convictions about the craft.
“I love,” I announce, “a good preverification in a story.”
Preverification.
The word hangs in the air between us.
The writer’s head tilts. Just slightly. Just enough.
She heard it, and her face told me exactly how it landed in her brain.
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Grazie.
I meant prevarication. The fine art of a great tall tale. The beloved family exaggeration. The fish that grows a foot with every telling.
What I said was a word of my own invention, a word that sounds suspiciously close to verification. So there I sat, a man devoted to language, warmly praising the careful fact-checking of a fib.
In the tilt of that head, I watched the whole thing arrive.
Yep. I said that. In an interview.
Now here I sit in the Studio with the finest coffee in the world in my hand, giggling. A grown man. A little boy again.
The Kansas City Star & Times taught me a lesson long ago, and it has served me better than any dictionary: He who learns to laugh at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.
Amen to that.
I take another sip. The coffee is still warm. Somewhere out there, a writer remembers the man who loves a good preverification.
So do I.
Let Love Lead … then tell the truth in style.
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