Don’t believe it, son. He’s making it all up

Over the years, I’ve made every member of my family and many of my friends cringe when I wrote about them in a column.

For a long time, whenever I wrote about something one of them might consider embarrassing, I’d take the column home and read it to them before it went to print. I figured at least they deserved a heads-up if, next morning, all the neighbors were going to read about a particularly memorable domestic episode, or their challenges learning to drive, or something especially goofy one of them said.

A few years ago, however, the other members of my family held a sort of intervention, in which they sat me down and, as a group, demanded that I quit writing about them altogether. It wasn’t fair, they said, because they didn’t have newspaper columns of their own, so they never got a chance to rebut some of the more outrageous libels I perpetrated against them in print.

I didn’t quit writing about them, naturally. I simply quit reading the columns to them in advance. And these days, whenever a particularly incriminating column appears in the newspaper, I scurry out as soon as the newspaper delivery person tosses that week’s edition in my bushes, dig the paper out and throw it in the trash. Usually, I get away with it, unless someone happens to stop one of them, say at the market, and says something like, “Gee, I read about you in the newspaper this week. That was some boneheaded move you made, wasn’t it? Whee, doggies!”

At that point, I’m running in deep weeds and resign myself to another long-winded intervention, which goes on until I promise I won’t do it again.

I always backslide, though, and really, what can they expect? My wife knew what I was when she married me, so she has no right to change the rules retroactively. And the kids … well, old Pop may have made fun of them from time to time, but his profession helped put a roof over their heads and helped keep the freezer full of frozen pizzas. I don’t feel very guilty about that.

But I have to admit, it feels a little strange when the shoe is on the other foot, and I find myself the subject of someone else’s column. That’s a horse of a different color entirely, and I’m feeling conflicted. Here’s what happened:

When I first started in the newspaper business, I worked at a daily newspaper out west, and one of my best friends was also a reporter at the paper. We both wrote weekly columns, and once in a while, we’d take friendly shots at one another. Then he moved away, and I moved away, and although we kept writing columns at our new jobs, we didn’t always get to see each other’s work.

And it turns out, my friend continued to write about me from time to time, although I didn’t know the extent of his crimes until recently when he published a book of his columns ranging from work he did in 1985 to columns he wrote this year. And there, featured prominently in several of the first columns in the book was Yours Truly — and let’s just say the arrival of this book was an occasion of great interest in my house when my wife started reading those columns aloud to my boys.

This so-called friend, whose name is Dave Simpson, didn’t refer to me by my real name in his columns; he called me Maurice.

Maurice!

And the Maurice he wrote about so frequently was a man my sons certainly didn’t recognize, and one I’d just as soon forget. Here, for example, is my “friend” talking about the differences between us when it comes to women and the concept of romance:

Maurice, he wrote, “was always a ladies man, sort of a Ferrari of a guy, with a knowing, smoky look that worked remarkably well at reeling in women — all kinds of women. He was what most single guys aspire to be, and his home was a lair. I hated him for it. … When it comes to his wife, he’s the kind of guy who likes to buy frilly little things, roses and a big box of candy every now and then. His wife … likes that kind of stuff, and she enjoys a romantic evening out on the town, with the two of them gazing at each other through the candlelight. But, The Wife and I are just different. We don’t like candlelight dinners, because there’s not enough light to read the menu, and at home, candles set off the smoke alarm.”

In another column, he wrote about the time my wife threw a catalog at me during an argument over Fiestaware.

He wrote about the time I sucked up a potted plant in the vacuum cleaner.

He wrote about a disagreement we had over whether men belong in the delivery room: “The other guy, who should probably remain nameless but is Maurice (did I mention that’s not his real name?), is so firm in his belief that men don’t belong in delivery rooms that he was in another county deer hunting when his first son was born, and on another continent on a junket when his second son was born. Honest.”

It didn’t stop there, either, and the whole time my wife was reading, the looks on the boys’ faces suggested she was surely describing an alien life form. This couldn’t be their boring, gray-haired old man, could it? The guy whose idea of a big night is a double cheeseburger from Wendy’s and an extra glass of red wine from the box he keeps on the kitchen counter? Whose idea of romance is making sure his wife’s cell phone is charged? Who watches English mysteries on television? Who doesn’t light candles because they set off the smoke alarm?

“He made all that stuff up, didn’t he?” one asked incredulously when he’d heard about enough.

“Of course he did,” I said. “One lie bigger than the next.”

At that, my wife laughed so hard she fell off the couch. “If you boys only knew,” she said, still cackling. We finally had to give her a paper bag to breathe in so she wouldn’t pass out.

Next morning, I took the book to my office, where it’s hidden in a drawer. And next time old Dave has the urge to write about Maurice, I really hope he keeps it to himself.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.