On Lies, Childhood, and Bad Movies

It’s easy to romanticize your past. To make childhood seem idyllic, to view everything through the lens of Keillor-vision. I would never characterize how I grew up as “lonely” but I was certainly withdrawn. My siblings were older (my brother has four years on me, my sister ten) so I was often alone while they were at school or with friends or (more likely) doing homework in their rooms while I played in the cul-de-sac.

There were always Neighbor Kids to play with. I feel like everyone grows up with at least a few- they didn’t go to the same school or anything but they were around by the time I came home, to play basketball or G.I. Joe or to rollerblade up and down the driveways or to the park and back. Manny and I would play Horse or just take turns shooting hoops at the basket my dad fixed above the garage. I don’t know how Manny and I met- can’t remember a moment where he introduced himself or the other way around. I think he was a cousin of my neighbor Andy- or maybe Rudy’s son? The details are hazy in the amber wash that colors my memories (maybe that’s Keillor talking- or I’m more nostalgic than I care to admit).

Manny would come over and we’d watch movies (Jurassic Park: The Lost World or The Phantom Menace usually) or play with Transformers. We played hockey on the street (which, thinking back, was incredibly dangerous and I don’t know how we didn’t get in more trouble) and chased down the ice cream truck if it ever came by. Manny was quick to laugh and also mischievous and manipulative. He had a year or two on me and when you’re seven or eight years old that makes a difference.

One of the first lies I remember telling my mom was about going to Manny’s house to watch a movie, two houses down. For some reason or other I had it in my head that the movie we were watching was inappropriate- I remember feeling shame, a sense of guilt, that my mom would blush at what we ended up watching.

The movie was Pokémon: The First Movie.

Nerdy? Absolutely. Disappointing and shameful? Probably not. Young me couldn’t differentiate or distinguish between feeling embarrassed and feeling excited. My mom had gotten me my Gameboy Color (in “berry” color, which I loved more than my friend Brad’s “atomic purple”) for Christmas, along with Pokémon Blue (I went through at least one pair of batteries that day) so it’s not immediately clear to me why I felt this way. She knew about my love of video games and it’s not like Pokémon was something you could avoid in the nineties. I don’t remember much about seeing the movie with Manny; it was a blur of unfamiliar rooms, fights with some female relatives about who got to sit where. What I do remember was rehearsing what I was going to tell my mom after the movie was over and I came home.

I had been gone a long enough period of time that I would need a reasonable excuse- and I had already told her I was going to Manny’s house so it had to be something indoors. I figured that the easiest thing to do was to tell her something truth-adjacent. Yes, I had seen a movie; yes, I enjoyed it and had had a great time; but instead of the pit-in-stomach-causing Pokémon, we had watched an old comedy from a few years prior called The Big Green.

I have no idea why I latched onto this movie as being the one that I would tell my mom about. I had never seen it. I knew nothing about it. I wasn’t into soccer and therefore couldn’t plausibly lie about it. But somehow this was the movie I told my mom that Manny and I had watched. “How was it?” “Oh, just great. Really funny.” “Yeah? What’s it about?” “Oh, funny soccer stuff. Lots of kids tripping and the ball hits people in the face. And of course there’s that rival team…”

Flawless. Undetectable. If there had been a polygraph present I couldn’t have been more convincing.

My mom didn’t say anything more and I was left with a feeling of queasy triumph. Sure, she believed me (in all likelihood she didn’t but wasn’t much interested in the machinations of a nine-year-old), but at what cost? Was my future darkened? Would I become a two-faced monster, desperately trying to keep my lies straight while staying one step ahead of the police, always running, never resting?

I mean, I didn’t, but how could I have known that at the time?

Manny and I did what most Neighbor Kids eventually do- we grew apart. Middle school came, then high school. Toys became less interesting to play with, and after-school movies gave way to shutting myself in my room to get my homework done. He stopped knocking on my door, or maybe I stopped answering. New friends came and went and the Neighbor Kids went by the wayside.

I’ve still never seen The Big Green but I don’t want to. It couldn’t possibly live up to the hype, or compete with my own version.