Will Rogers, Jon Lovett, John Kerry.

A storyteller; a storyteller pretending to lie; a liar pretending to tell a story.

My father-in-law was a great story teller. He was an independent mortgage broker in the 1960s and had the opportunity to deal with a lot of interesting people. As he got older, he would start a story and I would immediately shift forward and smile, “I always liked this story, Al, particularly because the end keeps changing.” The ending didn’t change; the story merely began in the same place but meandered onto a different path amidships.

That, I think, ends the similarity between my father-in-law and John Kerry. Al would find an audience and tell them a story; John Kerry would find a story and tell it to an audience.

I have read this Kerry story before. It is one of my favorites.

"I have always had pets in my life, and there are a few that I remember very fondly," Mr. Kerry replied. "When I was serving on a Swift Boat in Vietnam, my crewmates and I had a dog we called VC.

"One day as our Swift Boat was heading up a river, a mine exploded hard under our boat," he continued. "After picking ourselves up, we discovered VC was MIA (missing in action). Several minutes of frantic search followed, after which we thought we'd lost him. We were relieved when another boat called asking if we were missing a dog."

Said Mr. Kerry: "It turns out VC was catapulted from the deck of our boat and landed, confused but unhurt, on the deck of another boat in our patrol."

I love that story. The article continues: “No military records on Mr. Kerry's Web site, which aides say is a complete accounting, mention a mine exploding under his boat or any dog. The only report of a mine detonating "near" Mr. Kerry's PCF 94 was March 13, 1969, when Mr. Kerry says he was injured and a man knocked overboard.”

But don’t let that take away from your enjoyment. It really is a good story.