Man tells his friend's girlfriend where the family’s pasta recipe really came from: ‘I laughed and said we originally got it off the back of a pasta box in college. The table went completely quiet’

He transformed a cheap, ridiculous college memory into ancestral culture. You gotta give it to him; he is an artistWe all do this when we want to impress somebody; we alter our story a little bit to make it seem far greater than it really is. The grandmother story carries a lot of weight because it implies care, nurture, femininity, heritage, bonding, childhood, tradition, a lot of things. A recipe coming from the back of a pasta box paradoxically brings nothing to the table.If you ask me, though, the story of two broke boys learning a recipe and making it a tradition, so much so that it tastes like a grandma's recipe, is far more interesting, but you have to have a trained eye to see the beauty in that. The boyfriend chose the safer option; he went with the grandma. It's a guaranteed success.People constantly mythologize themselves; it's normal, and it doesn't necessarily come from deceit. It's not calculated manipulation; it's narrative self-creation.His friend chose not to be loyal and keep the lie alive; he was a bit slow to realize that's what he was supposed to do. The fiction was working until his friend ruined it all, but hey, he is kinda helping him to be more sincere.The…

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