Is your friend named Chuck Barris?
Oh, that guy!
Listen, when I was a CIA agent, we went all over the country looking for Marine rejects that could shoot. We trained them and then flew them into Panama for missions that I can’t really talk about.
Tell him Agent B says, “Hey.”
Don’t lend this guy any money. If you have loaned him any money, come to terms with the fact that you’re not getting it back. You might get another interesting story about why he can’t pay you, but you won’t get any actual money from him.
…maybe he’s telling the truth? Sure, why not.
All joking aside, I feel for you, Argent Towers. You had a good friend who abused your trust and treated you like a rube. He can never really be your friend again and that hurts.
When were Americans ever held hostage in Iraq?
Yeah, I’m imagining all the Masons sitting around trying to top each other with the stories they can sell to Argent Towers. Next guy will have been secretly at the controls of the Enola Gay.
As a matter of fact, I was given secret night training as a mess hall supervisor.
Not really that many. I’ve encountered some online posers; this is really the first guy to lie to me in person. And the fact that he is someone I trusted so much makes it very painful for me.
I spoke to the Master of the lodge about this incident and he told me that the guy in question has “sort of a reputation as a con artist” and that he has told other lies and half-truths including dubiously claiming to have cancer and then being miraculously healed. He also apparently asks people to lend him money.
I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this is mental illness, in which case I feel sorry for him and hope that he is able to get help. I actually want to tell him he needs help, but I am not going to, because that’s a whole other tricky issue and I have no idea how to put it to him or how he is going to react.
The fact that he asks people to lend him money and that the Master of the lodge has said that he has a reputation as a con artist heavily suggests that he suffers from no mental illness; rather he is just a petty crook. Seperate yourself from this person and don’t look back.
This.
The causes he cites for being rejected as a recruit are quite plausible. The services are not in the business fo putting children into poverty, and too many dependants means basically just that. If the Recruiting Station he visited was experiencing the Marine Corps’ usual success at recruiting (yes, I’m envious), the bounced check alone could be sufficient to disqualify - Why work to qualify a marginal candidate, when fully-qualified candidates are immediately to-hand?
As for the ‘wannabee’ aspect - those kinds of stories are usually the province of insecure folks wishing to impress folks that they want to admire them. IOW, your ‘brother’ is impressed with you, and wishes to measure up well in your eyes.
If you still wish to retain his freindship after this revelation, then talk-up your respect for his verifiable life and attributes, and quickly, firmly, but gently change the subject away from any wannabee stories - Quickly, he will learn that you value what he can supply honestly, and do not value what he cannot back up.
Then I definately wouldn’t let him ride the little motorcycle in any more parades.
This is such good advice. Thanks.
As I said, this guy’s real life is admirable enough without the bullshit stories. He’s a great father with three great sons. He’s well-read and culturally literate; he is very talented mechanically and is a skilled woodworker. He works like a dog, in the brutal heat, mowing the (gigantic) lawn of the lodge, and he cleared tons of brush and debris from when there was a bad storm recently. All of this is what makes a great Mason…not phony stories of fictional military heroics.
I thought the Masons were all about integrity and personal standards. How could a person the local head of the organization is more or less acknowledging is a grifter stay a member?
I guess 3:00 answers that.
I would say the fact that he asks people to lend him money makes it less likely that he’s mentally ill and more likely that he’s telling these lies to get people to “lend” him money. The problem may be with his moral compass, not his mental health.
When he asks people to lend him money, does he pay them back? Or does he come up with more lies about why he can’t?
??
They did have to give up on the whole goat staring thing.
Seal Team 6 is always getting the credit for MY work!
I assume he means your post #33 which looks like it posted at 12:00 pacific time which would be 3:00 east coast time–and assume astro is on the east coast