The Things That Never Happened and a Few of Them That Did

By Paul Charron

This book contains some of the wackiest tales you have ever heard.  Each chapter is only a few pages that can be read on its own as an entertaining anecdote. You can read a chapter, put the book down for months, and then pick it up again without concern over what happened before. That makes this book a perfect book to read waiting for a bus, during take-off and landing on a plane, to wind down when going to bed, or to enjoy all at once. 

 

It all started with the "Lobster Story."   In an effort to make his mother believe he had an exciting day at work in a seafood store, Paul told the tale of how a giant lobster attacked him and his coworkers.  For some reason, his mother believed the entire thing.  That started a reputation in his family of telling tall tales.  Only most of his stories were not made up.  At the urging of his family, Paul has written these stories down for your entertainment.

 

With his real-life exciting adventures too wild to be true mixed with fantastical yarns told in a believable way, one never knows if his next story is made up like the "lobster story."  Many of these accounts, like the lobster story, are completely made up.  However, most of them are actually true.  Inside, you will hear the original lobster story, learn about Paul's encounter with wild baboons, find out how his son discovered a new species as a preschooler, come to know how he encountered a terrorist while he was in the military, and more.  He'll keep you guessing which ones are true, and which ones are completely made up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Charron
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781393835042

Paul Charron

Paul Charron grew up in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia.  After college, Paul entered the Air Force where he functioned as a Human Resources leader.  He bounced around the globe with his family moving 9 times on permanent assignments.  He retired after 21 years of service as a Lieutenant Colonel.  He is credited with supporting Operations Southern Watch in Saudi Arabia, Provide Comfort/Northern Watch in Turkey, Iraqi Freedom in Iraq, and Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.  Throughout Paul's adult life, he has been known for telling crazy stories.  You never know when he is telling the truth.

Book preview

Foreword

When I first met Paul , he was a mess and a mamma's boy.  As a child, Paul had a wish to grow up and be a balloon man at the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.  That dream was dashed when his family moved back to the States.  His story telling began around his teen years, and it still continues.  Some family members don't believe any of his tales, while others are more gullible.  I hope, when the Family Fabulist's repertoire runs short, he will be able to get that position he wished for in Paris.

Paul's Mom

Preface

When I was a child , I heard stories about my father and my uncle playing practical jokes on people, mostly in the form of stories or malicious compliance (intentionally following orders knowing it does not have the intended results).  My father’s siblings (two sisters and 5 brothers) all had a great sense of humor.  My grandmother always seemed to fall for these stories.  The fact that she believed some of these stories completely baffled my mother.  I don’t know how she could have been so gullible.  These stories were just so ridiculous, she would always say.

One time, my father and my uncles left to buy a croquet game.  They were gone for hours.  When they came back, they didn’t have a game.  Apparently, everything available was junk.  My grandmother was livid.  Why were you gone for so long? 

My uncle said, I picked up a croquet wicket, and it bent easily in my hand. 

Nom d’une pipe! (my dad’s family is French). I can’t believe you broke it, and you didn’t even pay for it!  My uncle knew he had hooked my grandmother.  He continued the story about how he struck the ball with a mallet, and the head of the mallet came off.  The ball then rolled out the door and down the sidewalk.  It then struck a baby carriage and knocked the brake off.  The baby carriage rolled down the hill and into the street.  A truck swerved to miss the baby carriage and struck a car.  The car was a limousine that was carrying the Ambassador from Zimbabwe.  His pregnant wife was in labor, and they had to call an ambulance.  The entire thing caused an international incident.  The entire time, my grandmother was getting more and more upset.  My mother, realizing this was all made up, thought she was nuts.

Another time, before my mother and father met in the U.S., my father and his two little brothers were looking in the sky in Paris.  There was nothing there.  They were just looking at some strange clouds or a passing airplane.  Someone asked what they were looking at.  Oh, that U.F.O. up there.  See it?  The passer-by just stared up in the sky, attracting another one.  After a while, they had a couple of them until someone else said that they SAW IT!!!  Then another.  Soon, there was a crowd.  The three of them left bored of the continuing drama.  The next day, in one of the local papers, there was a headline that a U.F.O. was seen in Paris.

My father and his family were on their way to a dinner in two separate cars during rush hour traffic in the center of Paris.  For those of you who don’t know, around the Arc de Triomphe is one of the craziest traffic circles in the world called Place d’Etoile where 12 main roads meet.  Cars dart in and out of the circle and change lanes like crazy.  As a result, my uncle had to hit the brakes pretty quickly once, and his brother tapped into his rear end.  My uncle got out of the car to check the damage (none there) and began yelling at his brother.  My two other uncles got out of their car and began yelling back.  My father joined in, defending whoever he was riding with.  Other cars who had also stopped began taking sides as well.  Eventually, everyone was arguing with everyone.  Then the police sirens started.  My father and my three uncles shook hands, got back in their cars, and drove away leaving the police to deal with an angry mob arguing over who was at fault for a car accident that was no longer there.  My mother was petrified, angry, and utterly flabbergasted that they would do this.

However, my mother’s family is not completely guilt free in providing me with the gift of storytelling and practical joking.  My grandfather helped manage a hotel in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, when he was first married.  It was still prohibition, and there was a nearby speak-easy.  One fellow would get hammered, stagger into the hotel lobby, and fall asleep on the couch.  After several attempts to get him to stop for fear of being shut down, my grandfather decided to take this passed out drunk across the street to the funeral parlor.  They placed the man in a casket in the picture window.  When he woke up, he freaked out, jumped from the casket, broke through the glass, and ran down the street thinking he had died.  He never passed out in the hotel lobby again.

I loved these stories.  They were wild, funny, zany, sometimes true, and never about anyone getting hurt.  I learned that a good story is one that is humorous, far-fetched, and overall entertaining.  Telling them required animation, excitement, and an interested audience.  I never really had that great of an imagination growing up.  That all changed when I was 18.  I realized I had the gift of telling stories when a good idea hit me.  Sometimes, they would be planned.  Sometimes, it would happen spontaneously.  My first story about a lobster was a complete lie that my mother and at least one of my sisters completely believed.  Ever since then, when I tell a crazy story, my family simply calls it a lobster tale.  I learned early on that I needed to let my audience know when a story was fake or not.  If I didn’t, they may believe it forever.  However, many times, my stories are in fact real.

This book will share some of those crazy stories.  Most of these stories, in fact, are real.  The strange thing is that people don’t believe the real ones.  The fake ones (and they are usually the most outrageous ones) have all been believed by someone.  I won’t say which ones are real and which ones were completely made up.  The only exception will be the first story which, as you already know, is completely made up. 

The Lobster Story

My first summer in college, I worked at a local sea food store.  I always loved shellfish, especially lobster, and decided that working at a sea food store would be fun.  I worked in the back stocking the freezers, cooking crabs and shrimp, cleaning up the fish guts, and any other horrible job my boss would throw at me.  He would constantly berate me for being slow.  The thing was, I wasn’t slow.  He would want me to steam four batches of crabs for 20 minutes each and then wonder why it would take over an hour.  He was not a very good boss.  When I came home smelling like the bottom of a trash dumpster after a New England clam bake, I was not allowed in the house without first taking off all my clothes in the laundry room and running upstairs to take a shower. 

One day, I was weighing a shipment of lobsters and placing them in the tank.  They came in these cardboard crates with green lettering that said "Lobsters, Live, 25 lbs.  I would put all the lobsters from one crate into a large plastic bin, carry it to the scale, and weigh them.  One time, the plastic bin slipped, and I quickly caught it scratching my forearm in the process.  It was not that big of a deal, and I continued on with my day. 

When I came home, I changed, showered, and came downstairs to sit with my mother and watch Jeopardy like I always did.  My mother asked how my day was, like she always did.  I said, It was okay.  I got to weigh the lobsters. 

Somehow, that piqued my mom’s interest.  She leaned toward me, eyes wide, and said, You LOVE lobster.  That must have been fun!  Somehow, I knew she was hooked.  I have no idea what came over me.  I knew I had her interest, and thought I could tell her just about anything, and she would completely believe it.  I decided to stretch the truth, just a little, to see if I was right.

It was!  There were a bunch of crates of lobster, and I had to put them all in a plastic bin and weigh them.  All the boxes had green lettering that said 25 lbs., and I had to make sure we got 25 pounds of lobsters in each crate.  I had to move all the seaweed they were packed in, take out each lobster carefully, put it in the bin, and then pull out another one.  When the bin was full, I weighed it, and then put them all in the lobster tank.

Then I came across a crate that had blue lettering that said Lobster, Live, 25 lb.  I thought it was weird that the lettering was blue on this one, but I didn’t think much of it.  I didn’t even realize it didn’t say Lobsters but Lobster.  When I opened it up, it had one lobster in it that weighed 25 pounds. 

Holy cow! my mother said, eyes even wider.  She believed me.  I was a bit surprised.  I thought I could keep going, so I tested the waters.

I pulled it out of the crate, held it up, and asked my boss what I should do with this thing.  He said it was a special order, and to put it in the empty tank.  The customer was coming in later in the day to pick it up.  Just then, the lobster opened its claw, snapping the rubber band in the process, and bit my arm!  I then showed my mother the scratches on my forearm.

Oh my gosh!  What did you do?  She was still hooked.  I was even more surprised.  I had to finish this story, but I had to keep her interest in it as well.  I decided to keep going.

I screamed!  My boss came running over to try to pry the lobster claw off my arm, but he couldn’t get it off.  After a little bit, the lobster opened the other claw, and snapped that rubber band off.  It grabbed my boss.  Then some of the women who worked there came over to try to help, but they couldn’t get the claws off either.  The pincers on the legs started to pinch their hands.  They were almost the size of a normal claw, so they started getting hurt.  It was nuts.

My mother was hanging off every word.  She was flabbergasted that a lobster could attack so many people at once, and she wanted to know how we got out of it.  I knew I couldn’t keep going.  There just wasn’t much more to make up in this crazy story.  I had to find a way to end it, and it needed to end quickly.

"We keep nut crackers, little hammers, and ice picks on the counter for customers to buy in case they need them to