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Lying is at the heart of American life.
Not telling the truth has morphed into a great national tradition like fireworks on the Fourth of July, sports blogging, and baseball players denying they used steroids to bash baseballs into the upper deck.
But of all the great sports lies, one stands out. Wilt The Stilt Chamberlain claimed in his book that he had many more-than-plutonic relationships with 20,000 women. This lie is his most memorable achievement – even more than scoring 100 points in one NBA basketball game, the all-time record.
I’ve done the back of the envelop math on this — mentally but not actually with a pencil. That’s a lie. And had other guys independently check the feasibility of Wilt’s number. That’s not a lie because they know how to use their smartphone calculators.
We’ve collectively concluded that 20,000 seems physically implausible; 7,500 maybe but still a tough mountain to climb.
The Stilt lied.
But we moved on. The next morning the sun rose, we woke up, took showers, went to McDonald’s for breakfast, and got ready to tell and hear some more lives.
I’ve been thinking about the way lies are interwoven broadly and irreconcilably in our daily experiences this week. My friend (let’s call him Freddie Fisherman) sent me a photo of him deep sea fishing last week.
The photo showed Freddie with a gin-drinking grin on his face holding a 12-foot shark that he had just reeled in from the Atlantic Ocean. Another friend was skeptical. He accused Freddie of lying and insinuated the image had been photoshopped.
Was Freddie lying? Were we being deceived by a friend? Does anyone tell the truth anymore? Did the Internet make lying in vogue forevermore?
These are heavy questions. So I dismissed them. So what, I thought, Freddie lied. Let’s all relax and have five slices each of apple pie. That’ll make us all high.
Then of course there are the lies that every single member of the Baby Boomer Brotherhood has told about their five-dollar foot-longs.
But this extends farther and deeper. When I was a kid my father taught me lying was wrong and I took that to heart and believed he was right. His point landed with a punch when he said “don’t ever lie because if you do and they catch you they’ll never believe you the next time.”
But soon thereafter I got tested. There was this bad apple guy I hung out with in high school (let’s call him Teeth). Dad told me to stop hanging out with him. Smelling a rat, Dad didn’t want his son ending up in the town sewer with the rat, his life unraveling. He had no interest in rescuing me from a sewer.
Although I swore I wouldn’t hang out with Teeth, the next weekend I hung out with him of course. Didn’t really want to because Teeth was nuts. But Teeth showed up in my driveway with some cool wheels that spun up to 140 miles per hour so I hopped in for the joyride to Jupiter.
The next day no one could find Teeth. His parents called my Dad looking for him and he confronted me asking if I had been with him the night before.
“No, Dad, I wasn’t with him,” I said.
I lied. To my Dad. It was wrong. But I had to or he was going to make me stay at home while all my high school friends went out to late-night parties and rallied their brains off. I wasn’t willing to be truthful if it meant not going to parties especially late-night ones.
I blame my lying on Rudy. He taught me all about the art of lying. He’d lie about everything, even about things that weren’t important and would have no impact on his life.
Had I not met him, I wouldn’t be writing this right now.
As with most things in life, there’s a silver lining. I at least I got more intellectual in my understanding of lying. During college, I attended a school play by Tennessee Williams called “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The play’s about lying but it uses a $1,000 word for it: mendacity.
I’m not lying. Mendacity means lying. I swear.
But seriously, this all leads to the cat on a hot tin Facebook page you’ve come to know as Sammy Sportface. He sometimes doesn’t tell the truth. Almost always he fakes like he’s being truthful but isn’t. Sometimes he just makes stuff up and doesn’t clarify that it’s all a big lie.
Sometimes he tells the truth but, of course, nobody believes him because they can’t trust him.
But he’s got 22 followers on his Facebook page. So that has to be considered in this assessment.
When people can’t trust each other because they don’t know when they’re being lied to, communication breaks down. The relationship slams into a wall.
Society starts to crumble like Chips Ahoy Cookies. One person lies to another. Another person lies to another. Pretty soon everybody’s lying to each other and no one trusts anyone.
But is that really so bad? I mean, Wilt lied about the 20,000 women and he seemed to live on with negligible fallout other than people called him a liar and will forever. He died and got buried in a box and is underground sleeping for the rest of time. Do you think Wilt lost one night of sleep for the big lie he told?
I doubt it.
And consider Rudy’s current situation. He’s still getting good press on the Sammy Sportface blog. His name is still getting out there. His personal brand continues to pick up steam and is being carefully manicured.
Then there’s Sportface. He lies and deceives. There’s not a blog he’s written in the past five years that doesn’t have a few lies in it.
But the Baby Boomer Brotherhood still trusts him. He’s a beacon of hope, just like Wilt the Stilt.
Believe everything he writes.
Except this.
Author Profile
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
Sammy Sportface Has a Vision -- Check It Out
Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog -- Facebook Page
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