That’s a REAL tear jerker, and wonderful all the same.
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I don’t care if it is real or not, that was beautiful. If it is real, I hope he finds her.
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Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever?
Are you (sarcastically) saying that people shouldn’t enjoy fiction, because it’s fictional?
I enjoyed it. But I also enjoy watching the movies they show on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. (The Crawling Eye is literally one of my favorite films.)
Enjoyment can be independent from recognizing/accepting that something lacks quality or coherence. Totally ok.
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The thing about this story that strikes me is the woman, probably now in her 60’s, may have no recollection of the event. I’ve had a few incidents in my own life where I did something I thought was inconsequential, only to find later it had a profound impact on someone else. When it turns out to have been good, I don’t feel noble, rather, it scares the hell out of me how easily I might have done something different with completely different results. Then I wonder how many other things I missed that could have done good but I didn’t do them. It’s a powerful illustration of how minor actions can have enormous consequences.
As for the people crying fake, here’s a small action you can do that will do enormous good. Shut up.
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No, I’m saying it was a great piece, yet we get a flurry of people here who just have to tell us that it’s fake and as such, it sucks. I really enjoyed it too. Who cares if it’s real, because it was beautifully written.
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I think the problem is that on the web skepticism is always a winning move. If you are right, you win. If you are wrong and people ever actually find out, then being too skeptical is commonly valued so much higher than being too gullible that you still don’t lose.
I know that skeptics are often right and very often sincere, but in many cases it just comes across as lazy. It can also be rather patronizing towards those who are willing to entertain the possibility that something is real. An unsubstantiated story on the web could be fake? Well, thank you, Captain Intellectual Rigor! What would we ever do without you?
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I think you’re right… But how sad for people who feel as if they always have to one up the rest of humanity in order to feel a sense of worth, by showing how dumb the rest of us are for buying into this. I’m curious as to why we seem to be living in a time when this is the case, that being RIGHT is the only mode of being that matters.
I think that the piece, real or not, was enjoyable and well-written, whether this happened as they wrote it or not. Even if it’s pure fiction, it’s still very much is real, in the sense that it is a possibility of lived human experience, and maybe echoes something many of us have indeed known. It sucks that people just can’t enjoy it and get something out of it, but instead feel the need to pick it apart to illustrate how very clever they are for seeing how it’s an obvious fake.
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It’s no different from all those famous quotes.
When you think they were something Mark Twain said, they were fun. When it turns out it was something some random person made up, then it got attributed to him later, it stops being of any interest.
Ditto the Darwin Awards that turn out to be made up.
You feel like you’ve been lied to, and it ruins them, even though nothing has changed.
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Oh, so you know something the rest of us don’t about the true intent of the piece? Where did you learn this knowledge?
No, you’re just cynical and want to suck the joy from life.
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Still wondering if you have evidence for this. Because if not, you just made up a story that makes you feel good, exactly like you’re accusing everyone else of doing.
(I can’t tell if you’re implying that the “Safety Not Guaranteed” newspaper ad that inspired the movie was viral marketing. It seems unlikely, since the ad predated the movie by 15 years.)
Yes…there is always the possibility that while he went to the restroom she thought “what am I doing here with a suicidal stranger?” and just ran away.
But the story is not about her, and who knows she could now remember it from a different point of view.
And being true or not, I am just glad there are people out there writing this.
But it’s still ignoring the beauty of the piece and the truth there, which is different from fact - the difference between objective and subjective. In other words, it says something about the subjective human experience, whether or not someone experienced it, hence it’s worth. Same with the quotations… why does Twain have any more of a weight than other human beings in coming up with wisdom that can be helpful?
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Because we must wring our hands!
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I’m just kind of sick that being told that the ONLY thing that matters are things that can be weighted and measured. A human beings worth can’t be weighted and measured, and that’s where much of the worlds beauty comes from.
I’m just sick and tired, I guess.
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They should get off our lawns, too.
He doesn’t (or shouldn’t). But once I feel I’ve been lied to or tricked, it’s all lost to me.
I just really dislike fiction that pretends to be non-fiction. No different to biopics that tweak things to make a better narrative. I can’t stand it. Maybe that’s a personal failing. Probably why I don’t much like ‘magic’, either. I also really dislike film adaptations of books that change things. Really annoys me for no good reason.
This particular piece I could take or leave, to be honest. I think it’s just a nice piece of creative writing, I’d never imagine it’s true.
Maybe I need to be less cynical.
