The young savant who taught us about presidents and liars

I went to elementary school with a boy who was some kind of savant. He didn’t seem to know much about reading, writing and arithmetic, but he knew everything there was to know about the presidents of the United States.

Guys would ask him, “Carl (not his real name), who was the 19^th president?” and Carl would answer in a rattling voice:

“Rutherford Birchard Hayes. Whig Party. He served from 1877 to 1881. He was born October 4, 1822, in Delaware, Ohio, and died January 17, 1893, in Fremont, Ohio. He had three children, Webb Hayes, Rutherford P. Hayes and Scott Russell Hayes. He once said the President of the United States ‘should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best.’”

And he could do that for every president right up through Eisenhower, who happened to be the president at the time. “Dwight David Eisenhower was an American Army general and statesman…”

You get the idea.

Carl also taught me a new word. Because he was, well, different from the rest of us, boys liked to tease him by mocking him or asking him stupid questions or telling him stories that weren’t true. He would respond by pointing a crooked finger at us and exclaiming, “You’re a prevaricator.” I had no idea what that meant, so I went home and looked it up in this thing we used to keep on the bookshelf. It was called a “dictionary.”

Prevaricator
[pre-VER-i-kay-ter]

noun

1. A person who speaks falsely, a liar
2. A person who speaks evasively to avoid the precise truth; a quibbler; an equivocator


I think about Carl a lot these days whenever I hear Donald Trump speak. I wonder what he would say if you were to ask him, “Who was the 45^th president of the United States?” No doubt Carl would answer this way:

“Donald John Trump is the 45th and current President of the United States, in office since January 20, 2017. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and reality television personality who got to hire and fire people on a show called ‘The Apprentice.’ Trump was born in Queens, N.Y., on June 14, 1946. He is married to his third wife, Melania Trump, possibly an illegal immigrant, from Slovenia or some such Eastern European country.

“He is known for putting his name on anything he can get paid for including hotels, golf courses, resorts, casinos, steaks, wine, books he didn’t write, ugly red trucker hats, shirts, ties, suits, pens, mugs, backpacks, five children, four bankruptcies and a university where he scammed people out of their life savings with a false promise of wealth. The list is so much longer. He also made his mark in business by stiffing contractors who performed work for him but were never paid. He also likes to sue people for virtually any reason.

“He avoided military service during the Vietnam War by claiming to have heel spurs and went to Wharton School of Business where he claimed to be the top student, but has since been described as one of the stupidest students ever to take classes there. He likes to boast that he has a good brain and ‘one of the great memories of all time’ but can’t seem to remember that he and his whole campaign staff colluded with Russian agents to sway the 2016 election in his favor.

“He thinks the government runs like a sole proprietor business where one man has absolute power to make every decision, like a dictatorship, and gets frustrated because we have a Congress and a judiciary system that limit his authority.

“He is known for these quotes:   

‘What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.’

‘I’m automatically attracted to beautiful (women) – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.’”

And then, Carl would most certainly point his crooked finger in your face and say, “He’s also a prevaricator.”

Sometimes things just form a perfect circle.