Have you ever known someone who liked to tell the most outlandish stories? I have and he was one of the best baseball players I ever played ball with. It was such an odd thing really because he was such a good athlete and he ended up getting a scholarship out of Junior College to a Division I school. He was a pitcher and threw a great slider. He also was a tough out at the plate. He had even played in the 1974 Little League World Series as a kid as his California team made an improbable run to Williamsport, PA. He was also the biggest bull shitter I ever met.  Out of respect, I won’t reveal his name in this blog.

He would tell stories in the dugout, in the locker room, on the team bus, walking to class.  These stories defied imagination like the one about his uncle Max playing “Jethro” on the Beverly Hillbillies TV show. I remember looking at him when he started on this one and ended up just nodding my head and mumbling, “Oh, OK.”

The thing is I really liked him. He was a great teammate and played the game the way it was meant to be played. When he pitched, he threw strikes and got outs.  I wanted to make the plays behind him. We often did win when he pitched and he was usually the guy called upon most to put us in the best position to win a big game like the time we faced Butte College in the 1st round of the playoffs in the then called Golden Valley Conference.  We didn’t win but it wasn’t because of my tall tale telling friend.

Years later what I admired more than his athletic ability was his skill in telling theses crazy stories. As outlandish as they were (he was related to Jimmy Carter AND Ronald Reagan), he told them with such ease and conviction the effort was as smooth as his fastball.  His face and chest were chiseled and his voice was monotone and serious.  He stood about 6’2″ and had long, hairy arms and big hands.  You took him seriously until he opened his mouth.  Every couple of weeks when I sit down at my computer to write a new blog it’s a painstaking affair. I want to write something funny, memorable, and I want to embellish my words with unforgettable prose like my friend the Story Teller did.  I can’t.

I toss and turn at night sometimes thinking about what I’m going to write about next.  On blog writing day, I play computer games.  I read news articles.   I play Sudoko.  Ideas pop in and out of my brain but I get paralyzed in fear of producing something no one wants to read.  That’s the thing, my friend told his stories without fear of ridicule, of judgment, and the crazier they were, the better.  When Mount St. Helens erupted, he would say things like his Grandparents had died because they refused to leave their mountainside cabin and he expected you to believe it.

After college, I lost touch with my friend.  Like so many friendships, we went our separate ways and I found out years later he died of cirrhosis before he had reached the age of 40. I guess we all partied quite a bit back in the 80’s.  My pathologicaly lying friend just never stopped. I wondered what happened in his later years if he got ridiculed by family and friends and co-workers about how he took tennis lessons from Arthur Ashe or how his Great Grandfather died on the Titanic or maybe his magical imagination just dried up.

I admire storytellers.  They make life interesting because in the end their imagination is all they have.