I don’t remember the kid’s actual name; we just referred to him as Feewee. He had two older brothers named Sam and Rainer. (I didn’t find out Rainer’s real name till years later; we called him “Rainout.”)
In many ways, Feewee was a typical, spazzy 9-year-old. He liked comic books, cartoons and too much sugar. He also owned Rock-’Em-Sock-’Em Robots so it was often necessary to include him in our game plans, in order to be allowed access. At that time, there was no finer toy available, unless you had a fancy slot car track or train set.
But Feewee was kind of a pill; a whiny little crybaby who threatened to revoke our Robot privileges at the slightest provocation. He also was the worst (best?) liar I had ever met. He was incapable of telling the truth, even when it came to the most prosaic of conversation topic. Whatever was being discussed, Feewee always had an incredible topper.
For example, we (the other neighborhood kids: Larry Parnell, Tom Haney, his brother Ed, and my brother Greg) held astronauts in high esteem for a short while. (Remember, we had no felonious rappers or tantrum-throwing athletes at this point in time).
So we were talking about astronauts: Buzz Aldrin, Stuart Russa, John Glenn, whoever. That’s when Feewee drops this little nuke on the conversation: “I went to the moon.”
We laughed and scoffed merrily at this bit of news.
“Yeah, uh-huh, sure you did. And then you woke up!”
“I did too go to the moon,” he countered. “My dad worked for NASA, and they needed one more guy who weighed exactly 89 pounds.”
“What, there were no chimps available?” I asked.
Well, we didn’t know exactly what Feewee’s dad did for a living, but we were fairly confident he wasn’t holding down the NASA desk in Decatur, Illinois. We continued to razz the little twerp.
But damned if he didn’t stick to his pathetic story. And the more he insisted, the madder we got. We considered a red belly or Dutch rub as proper punishment for besmirching the integrity of our nation’s space program, but Ed Haney had something else in mind: He pantsed Feewee and tossed his Dungarees onto the roof of Mrs. Pierce’s house. That was a really mean thing to do: Mrs. Pierce was a cranky old woman who had a ferocious Doberman in her yard. Feewee was screwed in a major way.
Feewee ran all the way home, while we yelled “Streaker! Streaker!” after him. He stopped at the corner with tears streaming down his face. “I’ll prove it, you buttholes!” he shouted defiantly (or as defiantly as possible while crying and snuffling like a girl scout with a skinned knee).
I know, not a cool thing to do. But you know how cruel kids can be; “Lord of the Flies” and all that jazz. After that we called Feewee “Pantsless Perkins” after some obscure comic-book character.
We didn’t see Feewee for a couple of days. When he finally reappeared, he was armed and ready. He sauntered into our clubhouse (the Haney’s tool shed) and brought forth his evidence. A rock.
“It’s a moon rock,” he said proudly. “A REAL moon rock.”
It was different looking, I’ll give him that. It was bright purple and appeared to contain sparkly trace elements of alien minerals. For a moment, maybe two, we were completely bamboozled. Then Larry Parnell saw through Feewee’s chicanery.
“Hey! This is PAINTED purple, and there’s glitter all over it,” he announced. We set upon Feewee like a pack of crazed baboons. I can’t remember what we did to him, but it was probably pretty horrible.
We kept the rock; it was actually kind of neat.