Fakin’ It.

Three Simple Steps.

I think it is a rite of passage to fake illness, no?  This is something kids do.  It’s been going on for generations. Fiddling with the thermometer, the whole nine yards.  A movie (see above) was made about the premise, and I’m sure inspired an entire generation to stretch the limits of faking it.  I’m trying to remember if I ever faked an illness to skip school.  I don’t think I did.  The usual reasons I suppose would be to skip a test, or because an assignment hadn’t been completed, or maybe you were just a hard ass and planned to smoke cigarettes outside the Wawa all day.  Well, I wasn’t a hard ass, was a natural test taker, and when I didn’t have assignments done, I simply handed them in late.  No conscience.  Ice cold.  This isn’t to say I never faked being sick, though.  I can remember at least one instance.  It’s a little embarrassing to relay here, but it also ended up helping me in a way.

I once attempted to fake illness to get out of a Little League game.  I want to say I was about eight or nine years old. I don’t know if I was actually good at baseball at this point in my life, or if people just assumed I was good for an unknown reason, but after t-ball I didn’t play baseball with kids my age again until I was about 10 or 11.  They were always a couple of years older than me.  I don’t think I was freakishly big for my age, and to prove that point, I spent my early baseball years hitting at the top of the line-up and playing middle infield.  If you know me now, you’ll probably have to take a moment here to laugh hysterically.  Anyway, the point is, I was eight and playing with kids who were 9 to 11 years old.

This left me at a disadvantage in some respects, but it wasn’t a big deal until I got drilled.  Right in the arm.  Now we didn’t have any LLWS caliber flame throwers in my Little League, but there were a couple of kids who threw hard and dominated, and as mentioned before they were a couple of years older than I was.  So, when one of the hard throwers reared back and clipped me, it wasn’t a near death experience, or anything, but let’s just say it stung a bit.  I don’t think it bothered me right away, but a little time went by and we were scheduled to play the same team with the kid who threw b.b’s.  The more I thought about it that day at school, the more I thought that I didn’t want to get hit again. Maybe I should sit the game out, and no one would be the wiser.

So, when I got home, I broke the news.  Something wasn’t quite right.  Hey, little ill over here, better cancel the trip to VFW field.  Well, I imagine I was a terrible actor, or my story was littered with holes, but it didn’t go over that well.  I was fine that morning and suddenly I was sick?  My mom promptly called Balderdash on me.  Plus, it was her night to work the concession stand.  Can’t shirk that responsibility.  Not on such short notice.  If she was going to sell Fun Dip, Bubble Tape and Swedish Fish all evening, I could certainly drag tail over there and give it a try.  She told me if I got to the game, and I still didn’t feel good, that we could go back home.  Deal.

Well, what happened when we got to the field is that I found out I didn’t have to continue my ruse.  Right away we knew the Nolan Ryan of Malvern, PA wasn’t chucking that night.  It was just another kid who arched lolly pops up there.  As you can imagine the stomach bug I had been fighting in my mind magically stopped bothering me.  I felt good.  Ready to play, coach.  The game went on without incident.  I’ll assume we won (we were awesome!), but I really don’t remember the details.  I remember my mom questioning me after the game, after the last hot dog had been passed out (bet your sweet ass I had mine), and I imagine I just brushed it off.  I’m sure she was congratulating herself on knowing I was faking it all along…

In the end, it doesn’t make me real proud to say that I was afraid of getting hit that day, but I can say that was the last time I was afraid.  Something about getting through that game, even though the kid didn’t pitch, made me stop worrying about it.  I’d go on to take baseballs off various parts of my body, but always would emerge just black and blue and no longer afraid.  I guess the moral of this anecdote is, worry is often wasted, or if you are going to fake it, make sure it isn’t concession stand night.  And, there it is.