When men are boys, they’re supposed to play sports. Some might argue that men are always boys and there is some merit to that. But I’m talking about the span of years when male muscles are at their most resilient and reflexes sharpest.

For the average boy, this begins early, in kindergarten I would venture, the stage of development when kids are thrown together for the first time and little boys feel the first stirrings of dominance.  This will take the form of wrestling and running.

“Dad,” some boy will say proudly while standing in front of his dad after the first day of school, “I beat Charles today in wrestling,” to which Dad will puff up, grin, and dance around a little because Charles’ dad used to whip his ass every day from kindergarten through the 12^th grade.

Naturally, the boy will forget to mention that Charles’ sister Charlene knocked him down later with a straight right. It was just a fluke. Girls don’t matter. Besides, she was kind of cute, unlike Charles who everyone called Monk because he looked like a monkey.

As the school years pass, the contest for male dominance will continue and by the time the boys reach high school, an informal athletic pecking order will have become recognized. We know Bill will become an All-State halfback and go on to play college football.

We know Charles will become the fastest forward in the state and eventually wind up leading UCLA to a national championship.

And we know Charlene will become the homecoming queen, lusted after by the football heroes and desired by tinhorn Hollywood scouts who will tell their best lies to entice her into a career as a stripper.

And the rest of us? The vast number who didn’t play football or basketball?

When we grew up, we lied about our sporting exploits.

“The older we get, the better we used to be,” some middle-aged bookkeeper once said in a moment of inebriated wisdom.

He summed it up neatly, and when the truth of his words hit us, we avoided each other’s eyes and ordered another beer.

Finally, one guy broke the embarrassed silence. “Whatever happened to Charlene?” he wondered.

“Didn’t you hear?” I said more accusatory than inquisitively. “She was on the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team.”

“And she had her own SI bikini calendar,” another guy said.

“Jeez,” Sports Failure piped up, “We can’t even beat the women.”

“Yes,” I said, “That’s why we lie.”

The minute the words came out, my memory went back to my first big one.

“Dad, I beat Charles in wrestling today.”

Now that I look at it in retrospect, my lie sounds amazingly similar to the “mis-spokes” of a heap of powerful politicians.

I’m not sure why I wrote this. I think it’s because I’m bored and just wanted to fritter away some time. Or maybe it's because I wanted to clarify a lie of omission. I played baseball in a loosely organized and sometimes disorganized Northeast Arkansas pickup baseball league, an interesting pasttime in which we'd drive all over the place, stopping in little towns in Arkansas and Missouri and asking the first person we saw if the town had a team. Usually nine farm boys would materialize and the game would be on, in a cotton patch usually but occasionally in a cow pasture littered with cow patties, mostly stale but sometimes fresh. We learned footwork, a good skill later on the dance floor.I also played in a city fast pitch softball league, one of my more embarassing interludes. The only business we could con into sponsoring us was a flower shop. We were forced to spend nine innings under the lights with tee shirts emblazoned, "Smith's Flowers."  It was an interesting time of life in a tiny town in Arkansas. But, and this is no stretch, I was a pretty good ball player. At least, it gave me something to embellish as I grew older. In fact, as I recall it now, I was really good, the star of the team, widely acclaimed for my exploits by everyone but the coach who, when I returned home a few years after my discharge, didn't remember my name.