Exaggerate This!

I know that everyone exaggerates, it's just that some of us do it more than others. All of us know at least one person that can't seem to get their own stories straight, much less any other scrap of a fact that comes their way. There must be a chemical imbalance in some people that prevents them from just telling a mundane account. I've met several such people in my life, but there are likely several others that I've met that I never knew were liars (or exaggerators or embellishers).
I came across an article today about a man caught posing as a Military veteran of higher rank and distinction than he had any claim to (that article is at http://militarytimes.com/news/2010/02/army_stolenvalor_022210w/). Did this man, and the countless others who have done the same thing in the past, really expect to get away with this? He actually got out of the Military as a PFC after serving three years, but claimed to have been awarded all sorts of awards and claimed varying different ranks like Major and General. If you're going to lie, don't make it as obvious. Maybe he just got swept up in all the attention, or maybe he really is just a crazy. You hear about this crap all the time though.

Then you have the Military guys who exaggerate or embellish what they did/do in the Military. One such guy, let's call him Jim, felt the need to tell everyone he met about the super-secret-extra-cool stuff he did in the Military. Problem was, Jim would often forget that the person(s) he was telling the story to had been there when the event took place. That inevitably leads to the "Dude, that's not how that happened" speech, and Jim has to backtrack and add more BS to justify his version of the story. My husband works part-time at a local store while finishing up college, and he recently had a run-in with another Veteran who started spouting all sorts of nonsense. This guy claims to have went from the rank of E1 to E6 in two years. Anyone that's ever been in the Army can tell you that that is impossible. He also professes to have done all sorts of 'cool' tactical operations and such, but he pretty much lost all credibility already so that probably isn't true either. No one wants to be branded the liar, liar pants on fire type of guy (or gal).

                 

                                                   I fly this, and I'm a Navy SEAL
This phenomenon is more wide spread than most of us like to admit, and in fact we are actually encouraged to do it. Any seminar you go to or book you read on applying for a new job will tell you that you have to "sell" yourself (i.e. exaggerate your abilities a little to make yourself sound better). You're supposed to make every little thing you did sound like a highly evolved and sought after skill. At this point you pretty much have to do it or you won't stand a chance against the guy who claims he saved his last corporation millions of dollars as the supervisor of quality control (i.e. making sure the merchandise was all still there and working). I wonder what this says about our society; that in order to succeed we need to lie a little. This is a far cry from the traditional values of integrity that we like to think our ancestors had. In reality, who knows if they really lived up to the morals and values they espoused. Maybe they lied on their resumes a little too.