I've been interviewing politicians and other government officials on a regular basis for 13 years now, and I'm sure at least some of them have lied to me.
But I couldn't tell you what any of those lies were. None of them were as memorable as the ones told to me by Keith Mullin, my best friend when I was 11-years-old.
With two working parents, I spent a lot of time growing up with my grandfather, who lived a few blocks from us. Keith * lived next door. We'd known each other for years, but somehow became closer friends when I was 11, drawn together by nothing more geography and a love for the G.I. Joe cartoon and action figures.
There was little else we had in common. I was a mouse of a boy, Catholic school student, altar boy, bookworm. Keith had knives, rode his bike too fast, used the word "ain't," and didn't own a winter coat.
Neither of us had parents who bought us toy whenever we wanted, which meant our G.I. Joe collections were far from complete, forcing us to improvise.
In our scenarios, COBRA was still a "terroristic organization," the way the cartoons described it. But here, it was more like the terrorists I saw on the news in 1987. The COBRA guys drove around in beat-up old cars and vans, not high-tech tanks.
(Something about that made the play experience more enjoyable back then; it seemed more authentic, or as authentic as you could get when dealing with a snake-themed paramilitary group.)
Other times, we'd explore "the bank," a dangerous wooded area filled with junk and sinkholes.
("Bank" was, I think, short for "embankment." "Don't go over the bank," was a pretty familiar warning in the neighborhood growing up, one that Keith and I other more daring kids ignored. Years later, my brother and I -- with the help of our uncle -- would make a very, very low-grade horror movie called "The Thing From Over the Bank." Keith was no longer in the picture at that point, which is too bad, because he'd have been great.)
And as Keith and I became friends, I started hearing from other kids about the stories Keith would tell.
He met Madonna. Hulk Hogan came to his birthday party. There were others, equally outlandish, but I can’t remember them now.
But I know one thing about kids (or boys, anyway): they don’t like liars. At least not kids lying to other kids. Lying to adults is expected. But by lying to other kids, especially about things that are clearly lies, Keith made himself a pariah.
(I was never sure where Keith went to school. He told me he was enrolled at a public school in another town. At the time, it made sense; my parents sent ME to a Catholic school in another town. It didn’t occur to me that public school students don’t get to choose where they go. Keith was likely a student at an alternative school for kids with behavioral problems or learning disabilities.)
The stories he told me were never that wild; they all seemed to involve Keith’s extended family, myriad aunts and cousins and uncles, whose trips, family gatherings, and other adventures made the Mellons seem like a happy, vibrant, fun-loving bunch.
I saw no evidence of that version of Keith’s family on my few visits inside his home, which was narrow, dimly lit, and smelled of wet laundry.
Keith always seemed to see movie before I did, and would advise me against going.
“I saw Willow. It was stupid. There’s this midget, and a guy with a sword, and the midget keeps saying ‘You ARE great.’”
Even at 11, I suspected Keith had only seen the trailer for Willow. His parents – a pair of bitter, angry people -- didn’t take him to movies. Or anywhere.
It’s taken me longer to put other things together. For example, I think the stories he told changed depending on who was hearing them.
The kid who passed on the Hulk Hogan birthday party story had pretty elaborate parties himself.
As for me…
Well, this is where I get less comfortable, because I’m seeing this through lenses of 22 years ago, and discussing family dynamics that I’m not 100 percent clear on.
But I wonder if Keith told me stories about his family because he resented what he saw in mine: adults who set rules and boundaries for children, yet still approached them with humor and respect.
The last story I remember Keith telling…
“I’m in a band.”
He showed up one day with a boom box and played me a muddy recording. It could have been a recording of a band playing in a garage. I just as easily could have been recorded from the radio or another tape.
It was Guns n Roses.
Had Keith played “Welcome to the Jungle,” I might have seen through it. (My parents had a ban on MTV, but even I would have known THAT song in 1987/88.)
But he played “It’s So Easy,” the second song from Appetite For Destruction, and that left just enough room for me to think Steve was in a band.
He was older than me, far more tough and daring. I think there was part of me that wanted his life to be happier and more interesting.
Eventually, our friendship fell apart, and Keith reinvented himself as a terrifying neighborhood bully.
(And I mean that. It gave me nightmares. I remember one pretty vividly, in which Keith cut my brother’s little finger off outside a dark church.)
One day in the summer of 1988, I left my house, and Keith rode by on the back of a dirtbike, shouted “You’re dead!” and rode off.
When we were still friends, Keith and I had been in actual fights. But during this bullying period, he never laid a hand on me.
I was still more frightened than I’d ever been at that point. Stories about Keith’s attacks on other kids would make their way back to me. He bit some kid’s stomach open during a fight. Another victim he chased down, causing the poor kid to impale his leg on a fence.
“He’s gonna beat you up every time he sees you,” one kid warned me.
But that never came to pass. Keith’s bully phase ended as suddenly as it began. I was walking to church with my brother and heard Keith call my name.
“Tom!”
I froze.
“I’m not gonna beat you up!”
I stayed frozen.
Keith ran up to me, and we just talked. I asked him about his G.I. Joe guys. “I threw all that shit out,” he told me. (Like many kids in my town, Keith cursed a lot.)
We chatted a bit more, and I headed to church. Within a few years, Keith’s parents were divorced, and I saw him less and less.
By the time I got to college, Keith had hooked up with a slightly older woman and moved back into his childhood home with a bunch of kids. I’m not sure if he was their dad or step-dad.
Tomorrow I’ll head back to my old town to visit my grandmother, but there’s little chance I’ll run into Keith. I Googled him before I wrote this, and learned he’s moved to central Pennsylvania.
I found a My Space page; it’s his new wife’s, but there’s two pictures of him: one of him with his wife, another of him holding a tiny baby. He seems happy enough.
I’m not sure what we’d say if we bumped into each other. I’m not a mouse anymore, or an altar boy, or even Catholic, but I still doubt we have anything in common.
But if we did meet somewhere, even if it was just at the grocery store, I’d hope the stories he’d tell me would be true.
*His real name is something else. I suppose anyone who reads this and knows the circumstances of where I grew up will decode who I'm talking about, but I don't see that h
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