Note: I wrote this back in the fall of 2012 for Rosie’s Basement, a storytelling project started on Tumblr by a friend. I’ve always liked this piece, so in the interest of longer-term preservation and increasing its visibility, I’m posting it here.
I will always remember my grandfather as one of the first adults who ever lied to me. “Watch this,” he’d say, popping an olive into his mouth, pretending that it had traveled down his arm, flexing his bicep to reveal the source of his muscles. He was like a real-life Popeye, tattoos and all, a former Navy man who lied about his age to fight in the Second World War. I don’t know how often he pulled the olive trick, more than once, less than a hundred times, but close. Part of me likes to think that I was in on the joke, even at that age, that I requested its repeat performances despite knowing its secret, that Poppy knew that I knew, but loved that I loved him for the free one-man show. He let me in on the long con of life, but he also showed me how to have fun with it.