Dear Prudence,
My husband (Matt) is the kind of person who will make a story more dramatic with every retelling. They can stray pretty far from reality, but he really seems to believe what he says. This isn’t my favorite thing about Matt, but not worth divorcing over either. I stopped correcting him in public years ago, because it always got so awkward. But recently he told one of my colleagues a dramatic story about me going into early labor the night before I was supposed to defend my dissertation. I did have a premature baby while working on my Ph.D., but our son was actually four months old when I defended my dissertation! I’m so in the habit of not correcting Matt that I just ran with it, but later my colleague repeated this false story to another person. This isn’t a lie that would jeopardize my job if it came out, but I’m not comfortable having it floating around among my colleagues either. This experience has made me realize that I need some better strategy than smiling and nodding when Matt tells some overblown story about our life. Any suggestions for how I can do that without looking like the naggy wife in a sitcom?
— Actually, That Never Happened