When A Pig Gets Drunk

Long ago, in an era of ancient history known as the 1990s, a famous former athlete was acquitted of murder in a heavily televised trial. Even after the verdict, many people still thought he committed the murder because literally all of the evidence suggested that he did, but twelve people who weren’t clever enough to get out of jury duty disagreed, and that was that. Years later, after serving a stint in prison for an unrelated crime, the former athlete was hard up for money, so he cashed in on the crime he didn’t commit. He wrote a book about what would have happened IF he did it, which, again, he maintained that he didn’t. The book was full of super specific details only the real killer could have known, but, legally, he never actually admitted to anything. That’s the magic of technicalities. Stick the word “if” in front of a book title and suddenly you can confess without confessing, unburdening yourself of nonexistent guilt while depositing very real checks. I built my writing career in the wrong genre.

So why did I take this trip down memory lane to talk about a trial that, from my kids’ perspective, happened in the time of George Washington or possibly the pyramids? Because I, too, have a story that didn’t happen. It’s full of incredibly specific details I could only know if I were describing a real event that definitely went down in my own house, yet it didn’t happen because I’m officially declaring this is all just a hypothetical situation. That way, you can’t report me to Sarah Mclachlan or John Wick or whoever the highest authority on animal welfare is these days. You might think this is three thousand words of incriminating evidence, but for legal purposes, I must insist that none of this is real.

It’s fiction. It didn’t happen. I made it all up.

Okay, I think I have all of the disclaimers out of the way.

Now, let’s talk about what happens when a pig gets drunk.