Hoax!

Not to be judgmental

Coming into Labor Day, let's not do any heavy lifting. Let's let the Internet work for us. Here is a quote that the Internet dropped in my lap just now:

            "We had a little argument but it was nothing to kidnap yourself over."

            That's what the (now-ex) boyfriend said, with regard to his (now-ex) girlfriend's recent highly-publicized hoax. The young woman claimed to have seen a toddler walking along the road, alone, at night, and when she stopped her car and got out to see to the toddler -- as any decent person would --

            Low-lying fruit, you might say. Anybody would want to save a roadside toddler --

            The Toddler By the Side of the Road might almost be the title of a study of an iconic theme . . .

            If anyone had thought of it, strictly speaking, before.

            When the young woman stopped and got out to see to the toddler, someone emerged from the darkness and kidnapped her. Was the toddler in on it? No! Come on!

Somewhat later, she escaped. The hoaxer did. According to her story. Which tellingly did not tell what happened to the toddler.

            Poignant, the toddler, but imaginary. A projection?

            Interesting word, hoax -- from the magician's "hocus-pocus," according to etymonline.com. When we search hoax online (or online, we learn that Taylor Swift has a song entitled "Hoax," whose lyrics include:

                        Stood on the cliffside

                        Screaming "Give me a reason,"

                        Your faithless love's the only hoax

                        I believe in.

Which -- to me -- evokes the just-recently-late Jimmy Buffett:

                        I don't know the reason

                        Stayed here all season

                        With nothing to show but that brand new tattoo.

                        But it's a real beauty, a Mexican cutie --

                        How it got here I haven't a clue.

                        Wasting away again in Margaritaville

                        Searchin' for my last shaker of salt

                        Some people claim

                        There's a woman to blame

                        But I know it's my own damn fault.

            And I will say something now that may make you think me depraved:

            To me, Jimmy Buffett is a better lyricist than Taylor Swift. For one thing, he rhymes. By rhyme, I mean rhyme. I don't mean reason/ believe in. I mean reason/ season. I mean salt/ fault.

            For another thing: which one of those two do you think would be more likely to find a way to fit into a song a line along the lines of "We had a little argument but it was nothing to kidnap yourself over"?

            Notice I didn't say "a better poet." Hear this from Melissa Etheridge in today's New York Times Book Review:

            "People try to tell me I'm a poet and I say, No, I have music and rhythm to help me get my point across but real poets do it all just with the language and the lines."

            Yes.

             But let’s get back to the hoax. The young woman went missing. People searched. She reappeared, claiming to have been kidnapped. People doubted. The boyfriend defended her. She confessed. Her attorney said she admitted there was no kidnapping, and "it was a 'single act' done alone."

            Yet the boyfriend had to deny online accusations that he was "a clout catcher." New expression to me. I know what clout has meant over the years, but to online teenagers today, according to somebody's online explanation, "clout is just another teen colloquialism for influencer . . . And because this is a deservedly cynical generation that 1. deplores self-seriousness and 2. obscures anything  that might even begin to resemble sincerity behind a thin veil of sarcasm, rarely is the word 'clout' used in earnestness. It's like middle-sarcastic, and best deployed that way."

            Oh kay . . . I'm backing away.

            But there is nothing sarcastic about a wandering toddler: pure innocence in jeopardy. There is even something innocent about how the hoaxer undermined the presumption of her own innocence. Law enforcement discovered that she had recently googled, among other provocative questions, "How to take money from a register without being caught."

            When I tried to google "How to google, 'How to take money from a register without being caught' without being caught," I hit wrong keys and had to start over so many times, I gave up. My fingertips are too thick for the questions of today. I did at some point find a statement posted by the ex-boyfriend's sister, about the hoaxer:

            "She fumbleddddddd."

            She did. But to kidnap oneself. To save one's own toddler, fictionally. Dickens, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, they all did it, or tried.