I’ve gotten dozens of excellent responses to my Puta Grande talk. But my favorite was passed along to me from a cousin on the west coast. She sent the video to her friend, a mother of four, and that mom emailed back to say, Oh, this is nothing. When our family picks up someone at the airport, we dress up in full costume for them. We did pilgrims and turkeys when our daughter came back for Thanksgiving. We wore lederhosen when our son came back from study abroad in Germany.

Yes, really.

And there it is: The first time I’ve ever thought, Wow, I’m so glad my mother isn’t that embarrassing. It is a thought I don’t expect to ever think again.

Back in December, I went out to Phoenix for NewsFoo, a conference for 150 of the brightest minds in news. I’m not sure why I was invited; my guess is that I was there to keep the group’s average IQ from skewing too high.

Regardless: I was there, and at the conference, I got to give a five-minute Ignite talk. The gist of Ignite: Presenters get five minutes and 20 slides. The slides automatically rotate every 15 seconds. So it’s a whole song and dance type of presentation.

My talk was on sources. Screw ups.

And, of course: My mother.

Enjoy.

By now, you’ve probably read about Greg Mortenson, author of the best-selling book “Three Cups of Tea.” Mortenson, according to a “60 Minutes” report, embellished, fabricated and radically altered key details in his book.

Which is a roundabout way of saying: Greg Mortenson is a liar.

I can’t prove to you whether or not Mortenson has lied  – I’ve never read “Three Cups of Tea,” and I wasn’t with him in Afghanistan or Pakistan to confirm or deny any details presented in that book — but I know he’s not alone among the accused. The list of writers alleged or proven to have told stories that were more fiction than non-fiction is growing. James Frey famously altered details for his memoir. David Sedaris has come under scrutiny for his words. All fall into a particular category of liars:

They are writers.

Writers — particularly writers who specialize in the re-creation of events that they themselves experienced — don’t always portray real-life events in the most accurate light. I’m not talking about outright lying — wholly inventing events and then claiming them as nonfiction isn’t excusable.

I’m thinking more of the nature of personal recollection. The best personal stories get told and retold, and often, they change. They become bigger than their parts. They operate in a vacuum independent of space and time.

They are, often, part-true and part-bullshit.

Everyone has a fish story — some have an entire memoir’s worth — and I’m okay with that. No one’s confusing David Sedaris for David Halberstam.

Consider this thought, recently published in the Baltimore Sun:

“Some of the allegations regarding Mortenson seem to fall into the category of poetic license — collapsing time to tell a better story. That was an issue that I discussed Saturday with James Patterson and Charles “Chic” Dambach on a CityLit Festival panel on memoirs. They both acknowledged taking some license in their books, and I really don’t mind that — but an author should acknowledge the practice in a preface or elsewhere in the book.”

I couldn’t agree more. But it shouldn’t stop at books. I think this very blog needs some sort of explainer as to the way I tell stories. I’ve seen what “60 Minutes” did to Mortenson. I don’t want to get the Steve Kroft treatment.

Here goes:

❡❡❡

Dear danoshinsky.com readers,

The stories you will read about my mother on this blog are true. On the whole, at least. My mother really did ride a fire truck dressed as Mrs. Claus. She did hold up the ‘Hola, Dan, mi puta grande’ sign. She did once abandon me in a stroller to go chasing after a limo that was not actually driving Kevin Costner through downtown Washington. All of these things are true.

What cannot be verified as entirely, scientifically accurate are each of the conversations within the respective stories that appear on this blog. Those conversations appear here in the most complete version that memory will allow, and where my recollections differ from those of the other involved parties, such has been noted within the context of the story.

I cannot fully guarantee that every word here is exact. Some memories have worn beyond the point of recognition. There are times when I will tell one version of a story, and then, months later, I will tell an entirely different version of the exact same story. In nearly every case, the latter is a more embarrassing, degrading or absurd version of the story, and my readers have repeatedly requested stories that feature any or all of those qualifications.

I can guarantee this: these stories, in no way, have been embellished to enhance the credibility of the author (or his mother). They have not been edited to portray the characters within as overly competent or even decent.

These are my stories, and I am just doing my best to tell them. They are not meant to inspire you. They are not meant to portray life as anything other than absurd. They are here because I have lots of embarrassing stories, and other people like hearing them.

That part, I can guarantee, is true.

A very happy birthday to you, mom, without whom this blog would not be possible, and without whom I would be rendered hopelessly, painfully normal.

Indeed, I cannot imagine it.

If you are reading this, then there is a good chance that my mother knows everything about you. She knows when you were born and how much you weighed. What elementary school you went to. Your favorite type of Girl Scout cookie.

Everything.

I can say this with certainty because she really does remember everything. I’ve seen her whip out personal trivia on people she hasn’t seen in decades, and I’ve seen them stumble for an explanation on how she could have remembered something so forgettable. The first time I saw the show “Chuck,” I thought: a Jewish person with a Polish-sounding last name and a database of totally useless information stuck in his head? Hey, that sounds like my mom!

Which is why I was so surprised to learn last week that when it comes to my father — with whom my mother has been married for the previous 29 years — my mom doesn’t really know that much.

At all.

It started innocently enough at first. My mother wanted to transfer some airline miles between frequent flier accounts. We logged onto Delta’s website, and logged in with my dad’s information. (He had the miles.) They asked us to first submit two security questions for my father. Our choices were:

Mom looked at me. “Are there any other choices?” she asked.

I just stared. “Mom, one of the options is, ‘Where did you meet your spouse?’ Come on, you remember that one.”

“Don’t you?”

Mom kept staring at the screen. Then she yelled up the stairs.

“Billy! Where did we meet?”

Now, I’ll say this: some of those questions are tricky. I don’t even remember the name of my first pet. (Or even what type of animal it was. A goldfish, maybe?)

But it’s also worth wondering: Should a woman who’s been married nearly three decades really get foiled by a Delta security questionnaire?

Especially on a question involving herself?

1. A country cannot be truly free until its people can print out airline boarding passes from home.
2. If my mother starts running at the sight of someone, you should start running too.
3. Wherever your are, the drivers are worse than wherever you just were.
4. There is nothing more arbitrary in this world than airport taxes.
5. If you are on a historical tour, and your tour guide is not speaking in his/her native language, the truth will become slightly more malleable.
6. It is difficult to trust anyone who packs more than 50 lbs. of luggage for a vacation to anywhere short of Antarctica.
7. The same holds true for those who refuse to turn off their phones in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.
8. The number of crying children on your plane varies directly with the length of your flight.
9. It actually kind of helps to smile while you’re getting screwed.
10. Luxury is a very, very relative term.

Like many people who I refer to as aunts and uncles, my Aunt Lois and Uncle Bobby aren’t actually related to me. They did, however, have the unfortunate privilege of living across the street from my family when I was growing up, and they had the poor sense to engage my mother in regular conversation. At some point, they were granted familial status, though I’m not sure exactly when.

In the time that they lived on Pollard Road, they had two dogs — one of whom I was apparently quite fond of, though he died before I’d even learned to walk — and another, named Dexter. Unlike all the other dogs in the neighborhood, all pure-bred from well-known lineages, Dexter was a Boykin Spaniel. Before he came to live with Aunt Lois and Uncle Bobby, he’d come from a long line of South Carolinian hunting dogs. Judging by Dexter’s ability to chase but never capture neighborhood squirrels, we didn’t think much of South Carolinian hunters.

Sometime around middle school, Uncle Bobby and Aunt Lois started wintering in Arizona, and they asked us to take care of Dexter. My mother, naturally, was delighted. I’m not sure what it was about Dexter, but she loved him. I’d always guessed it was Dexter’s coat, long and brown and curly, with the kind of poof not seen outside of one of my dad’s high school photo albums.

Dexter would stay with us for a few weeks at a time in the winter. Aunt Lois would drop off Dexter and his doggy bed, and then he would immediately decide to instead take up residence on our couch. He’d arrive smelling like an Herbal Essences commercial — Aunt Lois liked to pamper Dexter at a place called Bone-jour, a salon for suburban yuppies and their puppies — and he’d leave smelling of mud and filth and the salt that they use to de-ice roads. Mom loved Dexter, even when he smelled, and even though she usually made my dad walk him on the coldest days in winter.

Dexter died when I was in high school, and afterward, my mother was as sad as I can ever remember her being. I guess I don’t really remember how Aunt Lois and Uncle Bobby felt about his death; we often joked that Dexter had been “bark mitzvahed,” but we didn’t sit shiva for him after he died ⁽¹⁾.

I haven’t thought too much about Dexter since, but today, my boss sent me down to take some photos at a local dog show. It’s about what you’d expect from a dog show in Texas: there was an American flag hanging over the premises, but it only had about 23 stars on it. The dogs at the show were enormous, which seemed to explain why I had one of the only non-RVs in the parking lot.

They had about eight large rings set up inside, with dogs parading around each. I stopped by a ring of small dogs, then taller ones that looked like miniature llamas. I rounded over to a ring in the back, where three brown dogs with floppy ears were being judged. I heard a voice.

“They’re Boykin Spaniels.”

I looked up from my behind my camera. A woman at a judging table was looking at me and pointing to an official dog show program.

“They’re Boykin Spaniels,” she said again, now pointing to the ring.

I looked back at the dogs. The middle of the three was being coddled by his owner. The dog had those floppy ears that hung like the flaps on a Russian man’s winter hat. He had that shaggy coat. And he had this brown ring around his pupils, just like Dexter.

I looked back at the woman. “I know,” I told her. “I used to have one just like them.”

She seemed surprised, and I asked her where the dogs were from. She placed her thumb over one of the dog’s names. I didn’t see the name, just his home state:

South Carolina.

I looked back at the middle dog, and I wondered whether or not he’d ever been quick enough to catch a squirrel.

“I must have just missed your call,” she said. This was last Thursday.

But I didn’t call, I told her.

That didn’t stop her. “No, Dan,” she said. “I just got your message.”

I didn’t leave a message, I told her, because I hadn’t just called. This seemed to clear things up on my end.

My mother kept talking.

“No, but I just got it. You said you were about to meet Hunter Thompson.”

I paused, the only way a man can pause when your mother calls and insists that you’ve just left a message that you did not leave explaining that you’re about to meet gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who you cannot meet because he died five years ago.

“You’re saying that you just got a message from me, claiming that I’m about to meet a deceased Rolling Stone writer?”

“Yes,” my mother replied, and without hesitation. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing for her to say.

I didn’t know what to say next. Of course, my mother did.

“You said you were sick.”

“I’m not.”

“No, in the message. Are you sick?”

I did not know what to say. To this point in my life, I had never had to deny the unlikely voicemail/I’m sick/meeting dead gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson trifecta. I started considering the possibility that my mother had been taking hallucinogenic drugs.

But thinking out the right way to respond to this line of questioning, something started to click. Back in the fall of 2005, I did get sick, and I did cancel on my friend, Andrew, who I was supposed to go with to meet a Mr. Wright Thompson — then a writer for the Kansas City Star, and now a reporter for ESPN. I asked my mother if the name Wright Thompson sounded familiar.

“Yes, yes, that’s the one. Are you supposed to meet him today?”

I explained that no, I was supposed to meet him in 2005, but I’d canceled because, well… I was sick at the time. Another pause. The timeline began to click into place.

“Do you mean to tell me that today, you just got a voicemail that I left for you five years ago?”

I started laughing, but my mother’s tone didn’t brighten just yet. I could hear her on the other end, still reaching for something motherly to say.

“You sure you’re not sick?” she asked.

And then, finally understanding the absurdity of the whole thing, she started to laugh too.

Right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a story about my mother.

Eleven months ago, I was returning home. I’d spent six months studying abroad in a very pleasant beachside town in Spain. I was well-tanned and full of doner kebabs. My town was just a week away from celebrating its annual bullfights-and-sangria-and-fireworks festival, and the Spanish national team was in the semifinals of the European Championships. I very much did not want to leave.

But it is out of this — just before the crescendo — that I found myself leaving. I boarded a plane in the heart of the country and landed nine hours later in Atlanta, where the heat index was topping three figures. Baggage claim at customs was slightly less packed than a Mumbai rail station. The customs agents were surly, as their baggage sorter had just broken, which left thousands of bags piled up at the gates, looking surprisingly like the Agro Crag on Nickelodeon’s “Guts.” Atlanta, I should note, is really not the kind of place that America should be using to greet our foreign guests.

But soon enough, I found myself leaving Atlanta and heading home to Washington, D.C., where temperatures were cooling into the high 90s, where the humidity just sort of wicks away from your body until you’re left stewing like a game hen in a crock pot. I was flying into Dulles Airport; my family was meeting me there.

It is here that I must remind you that this is a story about my mother.

She had decided earlier in the day that she would make a sign with which to greet me at baggage claim. At the time, this seemed like a good idea ^1..

She went to my younger sister, Ellen, and my brother, Sam. Both speak Spanish. She asked them to do a bit of light translation for her ^2.. “I want the sign to say, ‘Welcome home, my big boy,’” she said. Ellen and Sam told her that they could help her with that. My mother, so overwhelmed by the return of her eldest, most prodigious son, neglected to realize that her two youngest children have a sense of humor more twisted than a licorice rope.

It is into this that I arrived at Dulles Airport. Over my shoulder, I had two bags. One was a guitar case that bulged in the middle and looked unusually like a Kirstie Alley “before” photo in a Weight Watchers commercial. The other was an LL Bean backpack that was only being held together with scotch tape and safety pins. In my rush to pack, I had attempted to load nearly 4,000 lbs. of souvenirs into four bags. My two checked bags had tipped the scales at 48 and 46.5 lbs., respectively, just under the 50 lb. airline-mandated limit. The remaining 3,905.5 lbs. had been stuffed into my carry-ons and maneuvered into overhead bins for my flights.

I mention this because, ordinarily, I am a fairly spry individual. And on this day, it would have been nice to have felt youthful legs beneath me. Instead, I was essentially anchored to the ground by my luggage.

This was an unfortunate break. Leaving the terminal, I saw the unmistakable figure of four Oshinskys. Behind them, a small crowd had seemed to gather around my mother. I mistook this for coincidence; unbeknownst to me ^3., it was not.

The crowd was waiting to find out for whom this woman was holding her sign.

Minutes earlier, an Aeromexico flight from Mexico City had landed at Dulles Airport. One by one, the crowd had passed through baggage claim and seen my mother — a white, Jewish, non-Spanish speaker — proudly clutching a white sign with thick black lettering.

On its front, it read: “Hola, Dan, mí puta grande.”

Which, even if you’d spent your entire vacation inside a tequila slammer at Señor Frogs, you could accurately translate as “Hello, Dan, my big bitch.”

And so the entire adult male population of Mexico City — or something close to it — had collected their luggage and then moved toward my mother, waiting for her puta grande to appear.

It is into this that I appeared, some 3,905.5 lbs. of luggage dragging me down the hallway. I remember looking down the hall and seeing my mother, bouncing up and down, holding her sign. I remember getting close enough to read the words. I remember processing the words in my head, six months of Spanish still very fresh in my mind. I remember taking off, my legs breaking free from the ground, looking not unlike the Beast breaking his chains in “The Sandlot.” I remember my mother moving at top speed, setting what must’ve been a world record in the 60-meter dash, the sign still waving above her head. I remember her catching up to me at about baggage claim #7. I remember looking back; Ellen and Sam were laughing. The entire adult male population of Mexico City was laughing.

I remember looking up, into my mother’s eyes. She was crying.

“Do you like the sign?” she asked.

I smiled back. She wouldn’t know why until later. We’d wait until we were onto the highway, the TrailBlazer cruising along at 70 miles per hour, before we’d teach her her first four words in Spanish. We knew she wouldn’t throw Ellen and Sam out the window at 70 miles per hour.

I looked back up at my mother. Her eyes were fogging up. I smiled back and told her the only thing she wanted to hear.

“Yes, yes I do,” I said.

1.) N.B.: The phrase at “at the time” can not and will not ever be followed by a clause of a positive nature. No one has ever used the phrase to introduce a pleasant memory. I have tried to find a way to do such a thing; I have failed. It is, at this point, my linguistic holy grail. >back to article

2.My mother, who does not fully understand the Internet, had never before heard of Google Translation. >back to article

3. “Unbeknownst to me” is the second most ominous phrase in the English language, only behind “at the time.” >back to article

That photo at top, from left to right: Sam, me, and my mother.