When I was a kid about 5 or 6 years old, there was kid down the street who constantly pestered me to play with him. And I usually did, sometimes grumbling about it. You always knew it was Robbie at the door. He would lean on the doorbell and let it ring for 10 or 15 seconds at a time. I always sort of thought Robbie was stupid. Of course, he was 2 years younger than me. At that age, 2 years is a humongous amount of time. I had nearly a whole lifetime experience more than him. And besides, I'd rather play with Kirk, the kid up the street who was my age. Kirk and I were best friends. And by age 9 or 10 it became obvious that he couldn't stand me. But that's a different story.
I didn't mind playing with Robbie every once in awhile, but he was really wearing me down. I needed a break from him. So I came up with a plan. We were playing in the front yard and I said, "After next week, you won't be able to play with me anymore." I took a pause. He looked up at me with big, hurt, blue eyes. I finished off with, "We're moving to St. Louis." He started crying and ran home. I was expecting more of the 4 year old equivalent of "bummer dude."I hadn't planned on that. And there was much more coming that I hadn't planned on.
My plan was to give him a reason to not come leaning on our doorbell and I could get a break from playing with him. And a week or so later, if I saw him out on the street or he saw me, I could say, "Guess what? We decided not to move to St. Louis." No damage done.
Later in the week, neighbors started calling my parent asking about the move to St. Louis. They were baffled. Why would anyone think we were moving to St. Louis? It was another thing that I hadn't counted on, Robbie told his parents, who in turn, told others on the street. And the whole block knew.
I confessed that I was the reason for the rumors at the dinner table. As I recall, my parents were relieved to know the source. And they thought the whole thing was pretty funny. I don't remember getting any kind of punishment or how the whole thing was resolved. Since my parents had already talked to most of the neighbors and told them we had no intentions of moving to St. Louis, they left it at that.
