Throwing Cabbages.

I got sick and tired of repeating my life story years ago. I don't like talking about it now. I'd rather hear about other people's lives -- well, that is if they can make it interesting and coherent. Most people can't. At least the ones I run into. I seem to be imprisoned with a crowd that can only boast "I worked hard all my life, saved my money, and then bought a band saw." I would love my neighbor better if they had bought an opal mine in Australia instead.
The trouble is when I tell the truth about my past, that I was a circus clown, I get all sorts of breathless responses like "I bet that was fun" and "What a wonderful life you must have had!" 
Wasn't all that wonderful to me -- lot of hard work, elephant dung everywhere, lousy pay, and consorting mostly with egomaniacs. Of which I was certainly one. Am still one.
Then people get really obnoxious, because they either demand "Make me laugh" or ask in deadly earnest "What was it like?"
If they demand a free gag, I just tell them if they want a real laugh to go look in a mirror. But for the longest time, trying to be polite and get along with society instead of taking after all the poltroons with a machete, I would respond to requests for a circus narrative by telling a string of yarns that were true, mostly true, while I inwardly retched at the repetition -- and get this, many times people asked me to tell them about the circus, oh please, not just once, but every stinking time I met them. Did they forget I already told them that elephants love to eat cigar butts, that clowns used to concoct their own makeup and it gave them lead poisoning, that Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd stole some of their best gags directly from circus clowns? 
So, for a while, I stopped telling anybody about my old clown life. Except the grand kids, of course; I always laid it on thick with them. But now they're pretty much bored by it, just like me, so they don't ask for circus stories anymore. Now I tell them of my lascivious experiences when I was an ESL teacher in Thailand. They like those better, I think, and the stories certainly get me excited.
But the other day someone inevitably asked me what it was like being a circus clown, must've been fun, yeah? Instead of clamming up and pouting, I decided to open up and tell them the first thing that popped into my mind. Which was . . .
"Well, the biggest laugh we ever got on Ringling was with throwing cabbages at each other. Not firm cabbages, mind you -- those could knock your teeth out -- but cabbages that were overripe and falling apart. Those babies would explode right in your face like green shrapnel, and the crowd would laugh themselves sick. Sometimes we did nothing but throw soggy cabbages at each other for twenty minutes at a time."
No clown in the entire history of the circus ever threw a cabbage. They might have had cabbages thrown at them by the audience, but no clown would ever throw such a solid object at another clown. It would probably be construed as attempted murder.
This fairy tale satisfied my interrogator, and it made me kinda happy too -- I enjoy lying through my teeth to strangers, family, and friends alike. 
So now I'm anxious to tell people about my life as a circus clown. Because I tell them nothing but fabulous hooey, with no basis in reality. And who's gonna argue with me? Nobody can contradict me, cuz they weren't there, they don't know. The sense of power this new attitude gives me is intoxicating. I am creating new worlds from my imagination, like Charles Dickens or Donald Trump!
The next person who asks me what it was like being a circus clown, I'm gonna tell them that cotton candy is made from recycled newsprint; that Emmett Kelly was a spy during World War Two and gave the Russians the secret formula to Coca Cola; and that clown alley always refers to the bathroom as Republican Headquarters -- as in "I gotta go to Republican Headquarters for a while, cover for me in the next gag will ya?"
The truth will set you free, no doubt; but a tall tale is like filet mignon after a month of nothing but tomato soup.

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A very insightful response to this piece by BYU Associate Professor of Humanities Bruce Young:

If I'm reading your tone right, this is a straightforward piece about being anything but straightforward, a truthful report of lying and fantasy-spinning. Assuming it's truthful, it's also an expression of a degree of bitterness--and as with most such expressions, it's really a mixed bag of desires and disgusts, intentions and resistances and evasions. 

If I'm discerning aright, something like the following may be going on. You like the attention but you don't like the naivety or predictability or the endless repetition of the questions posed by those who display some interest and seek to give you some attention. You're interested in novelty but find most people incapable of providing it. Part of you wants people to understand what your life has really been like, but you're tired of talking about your life, maybe tired of thinking about it, having to remember it. You're maybe even tired of reporting on the interesting realities of circus life and of the history of comedy, because you've reported so often that the facts feel stale to you, even if they may be new to your newest inquirers. 

The one relief you seem to have found from a dull, stale, tired stream of human interaction is to tell tall tales. I bet that sometimes you enjoy the delight others find in those tales. But you also report telling such tales with the express intent that your listeners will think you are telling the truth--which gives you both the delight of creative fantasy and the bittersweet satisfaction of pulling something over on your listeners, at whom you can secretly, silently (maybe contemptuously?) laugh. 

We should perhaps publicize more vigorously your current claim to a degree of fame and a good deal of achievement: your role as poet, humorist, fantasy writer, and raconteur. Then you might have some greater variety in the questions getting posed: what inspires your efforts? what are your practices and aims as a poet, etc., etc.? What are your favorite rhyme schemes, motifs, etc., etc., etc.? 

Plus, by making your role in these creative efforts better known, we'll guard your listeners against necessarily taking anything you say at face value.