I met a lot of people growing up but like most people, I lost touch with most of them as I grew up. Times changed. People moved. Friends grew apart and long conversations turned into short messages every now and then turned into never talking to one another ever again. I think this is true with most people and there end up being just a handful of people that you stay in touch with on a regular basis as the years go by.
One of those people for me was my childhood friend, Brandon. Brandon was a good person. He still is as well. He did have a critical flaw though that he has never worked out of his system and I can say that it is simply a problem for him that has stood the test of time, so to speak. Brandon is just incapable of being an honest person and is busted so often in his lies that people just kind of know that this is the way that he is. Some people resent him for it, others get angry with him about it. Then there are other people like me that regularly call him a dumbshit for being this way and call him out on it and he actually admits to it.
Brandon moved to New Bern when we were both in 7th grade. I met him on the school bus on the way to school one day and he was brand new at our school and had moved to our city in the middle of a school year. I would have spoken to him anyway but our school bus ride was quite a social one and we would talk to everyone on that ride. Brandon lived in the same neighborhood as my family and over time we became quite good friends and would hang out after school all the time.
He was a good looking fella and was quite charismatic. The girls liked him and before you know it Brandon was considered one of the popular kids at our school and he got all the girls, was a star athlete, and did relatively well in his studies as well. He was, for that age, kind of like one of the "cool kids."
But by the time we were high school freshmen, just 2 years later, Brandon had managed to turn himself into a bit of an outcast in the school and the town, because of one very tragic flaw in his character: The dude just lied all the damn time.
These lies often didn't even make much sense. I mean, he stood to gain nothing by lying about a lot of the things that he lied about and some of the lies were so obviously untrue that it boggled the mind why he would even try to convince people that this was the case.
I remember a couple of his lies very vividly although he lied so frequently that the topic of most of his lies just started to blend in with what we witnessed and knew to be true. One lie consisted of him finding a bag on the side of the road in his car, and contained inside of this bag was a bunch of money, some guns, and some bags of cocaine like you would see in drug smuggling movies. Obviously this is an amazing story but when asked to produce any of the materials in question, he had elaborate stories that kept changing about why he couldn't produce them or even photos of them. The story would change depending on how long it had been since his initial claim and nobody had seen any of the evidence. He claimed that he turned the bag into the police and he was given a reward for having done so.
I already was kind of familiar with Brandon's lyin' ways so one day after school I was at his house and his Dad was there. This was several months after the supposed drug smuggling bag find, but I asked his Dad about it. Brandon kind of tried to change the subject real quick and distract me with something he "wanted to show me in his room" but I was going to get to the bottom of this and wouldn't leave it alone. His Dad's eyes got real wide and then he walked over and smacked Brandon in the back of the head (in a loving, not abusive sort of way) and then sat down and said something to the extent of "son, you have to stop this, stories like this could get you or other people in a lot of trouble" and Brandon was shaking his head saying "I know, I know, I'm sorry."
Then Brandon just kind of never wanted to talk about it ever again although I do bring it up every time I see him in person, which isn't often. I'll ask him if he has been involved in any drug smuggling finds on the side of the road lately or something like that, just to let him know that he better not be bullshitting me in this meetup but alas, he always does and I am one of the few people that he knows that calls him out on this. The rest of the people just kind of distance themselves from him and I think he is aware of the fact that this habit of his is extremely off-putting and it is a large part of the reason why he doesn't have a lot of friends and his family life is less than awesome too.
Brandon is on his 3rd marriage and I bet you can guess why the first 2 fell apart. If you think that it is because the ex-wives got sick of his lying BS you would be correct. I spoke to one of them one day during a chance encounter at a coffeeshop and she filled me in about the details about how she just couldn't take it anymore. There were new lies popping up all the time and every now and then this would result in quite embarrassing situations for her because she decided that as his partner, she was going to stand up for him even though she knew he was wrong.
His current marriage likely isn't going to make it either and he has not the greatest relationship with his now teenage daughter because of the same bullcrap lying that he does to her as well.
Some of his lies are to cover up dumb things that we all do like forget that we are supposed to be somewhere at a certain time. Others have been more extreme like covering up an affair and one time it was bank fraud that he nearly went to jail over. But most of his lies are just stories that if they really did happen, would make his life sound like it is really interesting and exciting.
here's the thing though: Brandon has all these stories about crazy things that happened to or around him that are just wild, but any time you hang out with the guy nothing out of the ordinary ever happens and out of all the people that he has known in his life, very few people have spent as much time around him than I have. I am extremely familiar with his lying ways and have frequently talked to him candidly about it. It's a habitual problem for him and I don't think he is ever going to stop doing it. It's just like some sort of addiction that he knows is going to backfire but he does it anyway.
He has lost jobs, marriages, friends, and even had a falling out with his mother for many years that seemed non-rectifiable until she fell ill and they decided to make up before she passed away. I feel as though when we do hang out that it is only a matter of time before some long-winded story gets put on deck and I just sit there rolling my eyes and have to ask him "did that really happen or are you bullshitting me yet again?"
I just don't get it because he has been busted so many times by so many people that you would think that he would have learned his lesson. It's been over 30 years since I first discovered this undesirable characteristic of one of my oldest friends and he hasn't really changed. I even know his "tell" where once he does it, you can be all-but-sure that he is lying. He'll be telling a story, then he'll kind of lose his train of thought and then he'll start snapping his fingers to try to help him think of the word that he can't remember and when he does that snapping of fingers as he tried to think of the word or name, you know that he is making the whole thing up.
I saw his Dad a few years back at the Mom's funeral and was talking to him about various things and he too, know about the "tell."
I have no notion that Brandon is ever going to fix this about himself and I kind of pity him for self-destructing to many relationships in his life because of this. I still like the guy and he is a dear friend of mine and I also know he would do almost anything for me, and me, him. It's just a shame that someone can spend their entire life living a lie and never changing.
Stay golden ponyboy I guess.
ever known a serial liar? How did you deal with it?