Stretching the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but. . .

I sometimes wonder about lies that people tell, and the reasons they tell them. To keep from hurting feelings, and attempt to stay out of trouble are probably the two main reasons, and most people will admit it (if only to themselves). The problem with lies is that they compound a problem, because once told, they need constant reinforcement. Some people are so good at it that they (almost) end up believing it themselves. But they almost always get tripped up or, in a bout of conscience, "come clean". Coming clean before getting caught is always better. I remember a "whopper" that I told that could have cost me my job. But first, a little background:



I was working in the machine shop of a defense contractor. My foreman was a good man, as were most of the supervisors in the shops. The assistant foreman in the weld shop was the father of a guy that I had gone to school with. He and I had not been "close friends", but we had "hung out" together during P.E. class, mainly because neither of us were highly athletic. He was kind of a brainy kid with nonexistent social skills. Nowadays we call them Nerds. Anyway, this kid was a "Junior", meaning that he had been named after his father. So I recognized the name of his father. His father had built some (for lack of a better description) sculptures out of metal: two humanoid forms that he had on either side of his driveway. One of them had an "arm" out holding the mailbox. The other held a garbage can with each arm. I had seen these works of welders' art many times over the years. I knew whose house it was, although I had not yet met his father, and had not figured out that his dad was a welder.

The State of Florida made a mistake that they later corrected. They allowed the drinking age to drop to 18. I happened to be 19 years old when it took effect. I was visiting one of the favored watering holes one Saturday afternoon. I was seated at the bar nursing a beer, and happened to overhear a conversation between some guys about my age seated a few seats away from me. The conversation centered around a prank that one of the guys had been a party to. It involved the digging up and theft of one of the "metal men" that I mentioned earlier. The story was highly entertaining and many aspects of the escapade were described in great detail, from the month and year to how they had placed the metal man in a phone booth at the junior high, from placing the phone in its "hand" to calling the police and reporting a spaceman from another planet at the junior high. I chuckled to myself, because I knew whose metal men they were talking about. A few months later, I was transferred to the weld shop, where I eventually got the opportunity to learn the trade that would support me for the next 30 or more years. As in the machine shop, my welding foreman was a pretty good guy. He was always up for a practical joke, as long as nobody got hurt and nobody got into a fight over it. One afternoon, I saw him and the assistant foreman talking. After the assistant foreman (my friend's dad) left the shop, I went over to talk to the foreman. Knowing that he had a rich sense of humor, I related every detail from the "metal man caper" with one added detail: I included myself, as if I had been right in the middle of it all. He thought it was funny, then gently reminded me to "get back to work". I got back to my welding, and when I looked up, my boss was gone. About 5 minutes later, when I raised my welding helmet, the ASSISTANT FOREMAN was standing right next to me. And I couldn't tell if he was in a good mood or not. He had wondered for almost a year what had happened, and now, here was the "guilty party".


"Next time you take my girl out, make sure she makes it home", he said to me. Caught by surprise, I could only sputter "that is a GIRL?" He started laughing, and now, up to my eyeballs in the lie, I answered his questions, filling in any details that I had earlier left out, but had overheard. The man didn't trust me for years. He later was promoted to foreman, and I was subject to his criticism and scorn. To try to set things right, and tell him that I actually had no part in the aforementioned escapade, would not have been an option. He would have trusted me even less. He and I were like "oil and water" for years. I remember him telling me one time, after one of our heated exchanges, "If I didn't need you, I'd fire you right now." To which I replied, "I guess it's a good thing that I'm such a good welder!" He spat on the floor and walked away.

About a year earlier, we the bosses had called one of their "all hands meetings", where they would fill us in on pending contracts, workloads, etc. Usually, there were one or more "problems" that were also addressed: people using their sick leave to go fishing (one person was actually spotted fishing when he had called in "sick"), or not calling in if one was not going to be at work that day. "The next person that does not come in, and does not call in, will be fired". Guess who the next person was. Thankfully, the powers-that-were decided not to fire me, but did place a letter in my file that I had to sign ackowledging that there would not be another incidence. Grateful that I still had a job, I looked the Director of Personell in the eye and told him that I would prove to him that he had made the right decision, and that in 3 years, I would be the "best welder" in the Company. I always made it a point to call in after that.

Anyway, my foreman and I were at constant odds. I used to (literally) dream of ways to make sure he had an "accident". One day, he and I (we still had to WORK together) were rearranging an area of the shop, he directing me on the forklift. The forks were up about three feet off the floor, and he walked in front of me. (This part still ashames me, and scares me to this day). I felt my foot start to slide off of the clutch pedal. I had a brief vision, just a millisecond, of him being impaled on one of the forks. I slammed on the brakes, dropped the forks, and turned off the engine. "I gotta hit the men's room", I said by way of explanation. I went in the bathroom and started shaking. Luckily, he had never known or noticed just how close he came to possibly dying. And, luckily for me, it was almost time to go home for the day. I requested, and was granted, a week off. I did a lot of thinking and soul-searching during the next week. I saw, and faced up to the fact, that I had been terribly foolish, stupid, arrogant, and disrespectful. I was (and still am) ashamed of myself for what could have been a tragedy of my design.

I returned to work after my week-long vacation a new man, strike that, just "a man". I set about repairing the damage I had done to the working relationship. It took some time, but we actually became friends after a while. A year or two afterward, our workload was rather light in the welding area, so I had been working in the machine shop for about six months. At quitting time one day, one of the welders caught me on the way out and told me that Certification Testing would be done the next day. I figured that I would run my welds and fail and life would go on. I came in the next day, and took all the tests for aluminum, steel, and stainless steel. Imagine my surprise when, about three weeks later, the test results came back. Out of more than twenty welders, I was the only one that had passed all of the tests! This meant that I was the only person who could work on some of the jobs in the shop. There were some who resented the fact that they were "outdone" by a young kid with a ponytail down his back, and I was even approached with wagers, "I'll bet you a hundred dollars you couldn't do it again". 'Turns out that the foreman was the next-highest "qualified" guy in the shop. So, we had the opportunity to work together a lot. At some point in time, he "stepped down" from the Foreman position and assumed the duties of the Assistant Foreman. I think there were some health issues that necessitated the move.

One day, I was called into the Director of Personell's office again. We chatted for a little while, and then he handed me a piece of paper. It was the "letter" from my file. "We don't need for this to be in your folder any more. I don't know if you remember, but when this letter went INTO your file, you told me that you would be the best welder in the Company. As far as I am concerned, you have succeeded in that goal." I might add that, in addition to "directing personell", he was actually the Head of Engineering and knew his way quite skillfully around all of the shops: sheet metal, machining, welding. "In fact, we are making you the Assistant Weld Shop Foreman." I threw myself into the position with gusto. Here I was, maybe 24 years old, with 27 welders under my command, many of whom had been welding longer than I had been breathing! My former nemesis had been working in our smaller weld shop, many times by himself, doing some of the smaller and more "precision" work. I would make it a point to pass through the small weld shop and see how things were going, and suggest job prioities to him. About five months after my promotion, I again raised my welding hood to see him staring at me. "How long have you been the Assistant Foreman?" I told him it had been about five months or so. "I sure wish the hell somebody had told ME". Somehow, he had never been officially notified of my promotion. I felt bad for him, but also took pride in the fact that I had never let the job "go to my head", so he had never felt threatened. We were friends from then on. I heard that he had passed away about four years or so after that. I had moved on to new jobs and new places. But I still never got to tell him the truth about his metal man.