Greg Young: Serial Exaggerator?... I Think Not

Words: Greg Young | Northwest Riders

Over the years, I feel as though I’ve gotten a bad rap amongst some of my friends as the guy that “makes up stories” or “invents fictitious characters” just to be funny. My only defense has been to simply state that for some odd reason I come into contact with an enormous amount of strange people and even stranger situations. I do not seek these random people or events out, I just seem to constantly be in the right place at the right time.

It wasn’t until this summer that a few of my friends finally happened to experience these random happenstances with me. After an in depth investigation and some long overdue soul searching, a few of my friends have finally begun to admit the truth: I am simply an animated storyteller with a knack for remembering small details of stories that others seem to miss. I hardly invent characters or give them weird accents, I just tell it like it is. Just ask Brandon Robins about the mysterious “pig women” of Tri Cities, or Zack Clark or Brent Starr about the Coeur d’Alene resident aptly named Billy Bob who gave us some memorable stories at the boat launch one night. While there are too many tales of peculiar people to recall, I am doing my best to right the wrongs that my slanderous “friends” have done to my own personal credibility.

I was recently taking a train home from a sailing trip to San Diego when, as usual, I met a peculiar old man. As I was sitting there watching the scenery go by in the observation car, a white haired fellow plopped into the seat next to mine and asked if I’d like to play a game of chess. Having not looked up as he sat down, the first thing that stood out to me was his thick Irish accent. It sounded as though a real leprechaun had finally found the end of the rainbow and I was sitting next to it. I looked up and was astonished to see that the leprechaun man actually looked like the small mythical creatures of Irish lore that his voice resembled. Actually, he looked a bit more like the by-product of a leprechaun that impregnated a Billy goat. After getting destroyed at chess, I decided that none of my friends would ever believe me about this guy, so I told a few people that were sitting near me that I was an author writing a travel diary and I needed them to pose for a photo. I figured it was the only way to capture the image of this rare creature and prove to my friends that my story was the real deal.

Have a peek at the photo yourself and tell me if I was lying. Without further ado, the mythical lepre-goat, aka billy-chaun.

"Haws-a-tees-a-toes-a-tah!"