Faking It

All of us, I’m sure, have either faked being someone we’re not or passed something off as being ours or a creation of ours, that was not. Haven’t we? It’s not exactly lying, per se. I consider it to be more like “pretending.”

Were you a scout when you were a kid? I was. I wasn’t the best Brownie or Girl Scout in the world, but I imagine I got something out of it. Superballs, for instance.

We called them superballs; I don’t know what they call them today. Superballs were heavy balls with a rubber interior. If you slammed them on cement or asphalt, they would shoot super high in the air, land, bounce back up pretty high, and keep bouncing. Hopefully you were able to catch it before it bounced down the sewer, gone forever. My siblings and I lost countless superballs to that fate. The balls came in different sizes. Most of them had a diameter similar to that of either a quarter or a Cutie orange. The smaller ones were more difficult to catch. If they landed on anything with an angle, they would shoot in hard-to-follow angles all over the place. It’s a good thing there was next-to-no traffic on our street. The bigger, Cutie-sized ones were the best. If you threw them down onto our driveway with enough power, they could bounce right over our house. (We lost superballs that way too, when no one was on the other side of the house to see where they went.) You had to be careful not to be hit in the head with an errant Cutie-sized superball. The impact could probably kill you.

My brothers, sister and I could never have enough superballs. My sister Julie had the largest collection of superballs in the family – probably because she wasn’t always playing with them outside, losing them in the sewer at the end of our driveway. The best superball of her collection, I remember, was the Cutie-sized black one. Its trajectory, when bounced, was the furthest of any superball I’d ever seen.

So, I am a Girl Scout. My troop is meeting tomorrow afternoon. I was supposed to have been working on badge requirements over the past week, to present to my troop at tomorrow’s meeting, to earn a badge. I love badges and am eager to add another colorful circular patch to the sash of my uniform. But I have not been working on any badge requirements. I haven’t even selected a badge to work on.

It’s evening and I have nothing. I search through my GSA handbook for a badge whose requirements I might be able to complete in the next few hours.

After several minutes of desperate searching, I finally find one. A Collector’s Badge. I think I can complete all the requirements and get my mom to sign the page, confirming that I have completed each task. My only problem, of course, is that I don’t collect anything. Nada. Zilch. I have heard that if you have three of anything, you have a collection. Unfortunately, besides socks, underwear and school blouses, I have nothing that fits even this simple definition of a collection.

But I know someone who does. In fact, I share a bedroom with her.

 Julie’s collection of superballs could be my ticket to qualify me for a Collector’s Badge. She has at least twelve superballs including at least two Cutie-sized ones. Will she let me borrow them?

Julie is sitting on her bed when I approach her with my problem. Though she says “no” to letting me borrow her collection, she tells me she will sell it to me for a nominal fee. I’m shocked! She’s willing to forfeit her I-guess-not-as-beloved-as-I-thought superball collection? I don’t argue. I ask her how much.

Julie keeps her superball collection in our grandfather’s old black metal lunch box that she has spray-painted bright blue and decorated with colorful daisy stickers. Very 70s. She says that she’ll sell me the collection but not the lunch box, for two dollars. I think that’s reasonable, but I need something to carry my new collection in. At least to my meeting tomorrow. Julie tells me she’ll let me borrow the lunch box, but only for the meeting, and then I’ll have to find somewhere else to put the superballs.

My only concern now is having to present to my troop how, when and why I started my collection. Will I be able to wing it? Make something up?

The badge presentations at my Girl Scout meetings are always at the end of the agenda. Just when it is my turn to describe my collection to the other girls in my troop, we run out of time. Total bummer – not! My scout leader decides, apparently, that a presentation is not necessary because signs off on my badge requirements and I get my badge!

Besides the fact that I bought a collection of superballs instead of actually collecting the balls myself, I think I behaved like a good scout. Don’t you think? I used initiative in filling a need I had and no additional lying was necessary. The sad part of this story is that it only took me a couple of months to lose every single one of the superballs in my collection. Easy come, easy go.

—   —   —

My husband Pat told me about a time he and his parents had been invited to a family friend’s condo for dinner. Though long-time friends, it had been the first time Pat’s family had been to Jane’s house for a meal. As they sat at the table, Jane brought out serving dishes of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Though she presented the food as though she had just cooked it herself, but Pat’s family recognized the food right away. It was from Kentucky Fried Chicken. The rolls were a dead giveaway, according to Pat. Everyone enjoyed their meal – who doesn’t like KFC? – but it would have been perfectly fine if Jane had told them it was KFC before she served it. Instead, an awkward aura hung over the entire meal.

—   —   —

Pat’s Dad, Bob, once served as mayor of Willowick, a small city just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. One day a woman and her friend — who accompanied her for moral support — came to Mayor Bob’s office. The woman was sobbing (as was her friend), and incoherent as she struggled to tell her story through her tears. Bob finally understood the woman’s angst. An unknown person had been tormenting her, ordering dozens of pizzas to be delivered to her door – pizzas she knew nothing about. That was one day. Another day, the woman choked out as her friend sobbed at her side, upset for her friend’s troubles, the woman said that a pile of dirt had been delivered and dumped on her driveway. Again, unordered and unwanted. She asked the mayor to please help her by finding out who was harassing her and then, to make them stop.

Mayor Bob had the woman’s complaint investigated. As it turned out, the woman’s next-door neighbor, the same sobbing “best friend” sitting next to the her during the meeting with Mayor Bob, was the woman’s tormentor.

—   —   —

My friend Sue lives in San Mateo, California. Sue’s house is on a good-sized lot and a backyard with a pretty steep incline. To give you an idea of the slope of her backyard, if you enter her single-story home from the front and walk to the back of her house, you come to a wall of sliding glass doors which lead you to her “second story” deck. Quite a slope. Her yard is also quite deep. I’m not good at estimating, but it’s probably more than fifty yards long.

Sue joins my friend Robyn in being one of the biggest animal lovers I know. Sue was probably in her fifties when she discovered a dead deer in her backyard. Wanting to assure the beloved animal had a decent burial (or cremation) and not have its remains eaten by some hooligan vermin, Sue called Animal Control.

Animal Control told Sue that they do not remove dead animals from private property, only from public property and roads. When no amount of arguing swayed the officer’s stance, Sue hung up. I love Sue and her dogged determination. I don’t know anyone, including myself, who would have done what Sue did next. Mind you, Sue is not some sort of Amazon woman, full of muscles. She’s just your average-sized lady. But a determined lady on a mission can be very strong indeed.

Sue went down the steps to her backyard where the dead deer lay, grabbed a hold of its hind legs, and dragged the beast up the incline, to her front yard, and then, with reverence, situated the deer on the road in front of her house. I can just imagine what a feat that was. She then went back into her house, called Animal Control, and reported a dead deer lying on the road in front of her house.

—   —   —

My sisters-in-law, Ellen and Deb, were in high school. Mike (name changed), a classmate of Ellen’s, called their house to ask Ellen to the prom. Unfortunately (for Ellen), Deb answered his call that day. Whether Ellen wasn’t home or Deb refused to summon her to the phone, I don’t know. What I do know, is that Deb pretended to be Ellen and said to the boy, “Yes! I would LOVE to go to the prom with you!”

Ellen, of course, was livid. But their mom didn’t want Ellen to hurt the boy’s feelings, so she ended up going to the prom with him and then to Cedar Point the day after the prom. She never told the boy about the charade. And no, neither Ellen nor Deb ended up marrying Mike.

—   —   —

Tell me about a time when you “faked it”!