Gullible - Moi ?

     So, I had a text-versation with my sainted sister, Aunt, yesterday morning that went a little something like this :
 Aunt : Everyone born before Jesus is in hell.
 Trudy : Really ?
 Trudy : Even Mary and Joseph ??
 Aunt :  And anne.
 Trudy :  Shit
 Aunt : They're fucked.
 Trudy : Does God know about this ?
 Aunt : Stephen Hawking needs 2 tell god and mary.
 Trudy : Oh - is this all his idea ?  Genius punk...

   So, now I am a bit irritated with Stephen Hawking.  Can't he stop yapping about the "big questions" for  just 5 seconds ?  We get it - your brain is as big as all outdoors.  Does this mean you can just willy-nilly damn entire generations to Hell ?  Seriously.  Get a job.
   Never one to let a potential rumor let too much grass grow under it, I am quite ready to start spreading this one.  I can see the headlines now : "Hawking Hastens Hordes to Hades !"  "Go To Hell - Oops, Too Late",  "Genius Gets Greedy - Gathers Generations For Gehenna !" .  You get the point.  This shit is SO on.   Fucking Hawking.  
    I don't know whether to head to The Internets, the cellular unit, the land line, smoke signals, hastily-crafted banners, letters to the editor...   As luck would have it, my day's plans are...redirected with a follow-up call from Aunt.  I immediately launch into my Hawking Rant, ready to skewer his smarter-than-thou prissy little attitude.  (Ed. note : Chief does a great imitation of Stephen Hawking asking a clown to twist him up a giraffe balloon animal.  Don't ask.  But it is magic.)
      Aunt then tells me this new rumor is, in fact, not true.  I deflate like an actual balloon (animal).  Can I count on nothing in this world ?   Is death and taxes it ?   I feel a steely resolve - I'm going to run it up the flagpole anyway - thousands out there are ready to salute anything.  (Just like a recent blurb on Perez Hilton that said that Lady GaGa's "Telephone" was actually first performed  by The Beatles - live filmed proof !  I urged Sparky to think, girl, think : cell phones and texting were not the typical Beatle experience.  But it's on Perez !!)
    Apparently, Aunt was watching TV, and blended 2 things together :  a) 30 Rock contained a song that  suggested that anyone born before Jesus is, in fact, is experiencing eternal damnation as we speak and b) there was a show on about Stephen Hawking.   Voila !  Stephen Hawking said that everyone born before Jesus is in hell.  (It's just arbitrary and punishing enough to actually be Catholic.)
   Cocky bastard (Hawking, not Jesus).
  I am now kind of disappointed, because I was really getting attached to this particular rumor.  It had legs.  We spread rumors like wildfire in my house - sometimes, one quick cycle around the dinner table results in the most absurd (but believable !) things.  Speed of light doesn't even touch it.  I guess, secretly, I love making stuff up and seeing who buys it.  You'd be surprised : the undisputed and reigning champ of this is the Older Daughter, Missy.  I get her each and every time.  Her most-often uttered word around me is "wait - really?"
   So Aunt tells me "you're so gullible !"  I am taken aback - : gullible - moi ?  I think not.  I am old and hardened and wizened and cranky and street-wise and salty -  I am not the one that's born every minute.  I always assumed that one had to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Trudy.   Then, I started to recall other times when I might have been considered "gullible", and only came up with two (2).  The first time shouldn't count, because I was just a kid and why would my Daddy lie to me : to wit, we had big steaks for dinner one night.  We were an Irish-Catholic family of 8,  and any dalliance with the higher-level beef was usually prefaced with "let company have the meat first."  My Mom used to lie to the butcher when she bought 7 pounds of hamburger to get us through a week of dinners by saying, eyes-rolling : "...oh, those darned teen-age parties..."
     So, Daddy is asked about the provenance of The Steaks, and he says "they fell off the back of a truck".  Immediately, my little-girl mind started clicking and whirring.  How cool that must have been !  What are the odds ?  I pictured drop-dead gorgeous steaks wrapped neatly (by a swarthy Italian man in a blood-spattered white apron) in pink butcher paper, plopping off the back of (I guess) a steak truck right in front of my Dad on the way home from work.  Then, he jumps out of his car, scoops this booty up, and comes home to feed his family.  A real  hunter/gatherer scenario.  Steak never tasted so good.  Meat with a story.
       UPDATE : there is no such thing as steaks that fall off the back of a truck.  I just found this out VERY RECENTLY when someone on TV referred to stolen or ill-gotten things as having "fallen off the back of a truck".  My whole life passed before my eyes, and I automatically questioned every supposed "reality" of the past 40 years.  Whaddya mean The Steak didn't fall off the back of a truck ?  This was one of my most treasured childhood memories !  Now, it is dust.  Stolen dust.  What the hell ?
My foundations, such as they are, have been shaken to their very core.  I am untethered, afloat, aimless.
My life is meaningless (er).
    The other supposedly "gullible" thing I can think of is when I believed Chief when he told me that his wedding ring (his father's) was especially meaningful because his father's first wife was named "Trudy".  She died tragically young, as the good are purported to do.  Again - what are the odds ?  I was so touched ...in the head !   I knew Chief and his family a full 10 years prior to our Union - knew everything about them and theirs.  Including that fact that there was no first wife, let alone one with my name.
     Life is a shell game, and there is bullshit under each shell.