What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie.
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. When they were ten he asked her to marry him. When they were eleven he kissed her for the first time. . . For her sixteenth birthday he gave her an English dictionary and together they learned the words.