Hello Friends, buddies, and good people of the forums. This is a very difficult e-mail for me to write so please, PLEASE read the whole thing. First off, I must confess…My name is Zachary Lee Pumphery (no suprizes yet). But there comes the part that is difficult for me to do…I’m a 14 year old freshman student at Twin Rivers High School. You may know me as “UPTRAIN, the 44 year old UP engineer”. I must now tell you that that is false. I will now state why this huge misunderstanding took place.
Me as an engineer started off about 3 years ago in 2001 in a railroad chat room. I was told by my parents not to join it because the feared people “coming to our house” and “killing us”. They were in some cases very technological illiterate and didn’t understand that unless I told you who I was they would have no clue who I really was. So I thought up plan that I would soon find out was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.
I never had that many friends in my early years. I have one good friend now named Dustin Dunn. Yes he went along with me on the whole lieing thing. We are now both very sorry for doing this. Anyways, when this fib started to my suprize many people bought it. So I kept it going because of the silly fear that my parents had had in the earlier years.
People began to become my friends because of what I claimed to be, not for who I really was. I never gave in because I feared that nobody would want to even talk to a person like me. I began to form personal bonds with some of you people and you were my real friends, for who I claimed to be, not for who I was.
I will now state some things to forget that “I” said,
Any Railroad Story: Forget that I said these, most of these happened to current or former railroad employees that I know, not to “me” as I have previously claimed.
Thank you both for understanding. One other reason I came clean was that if I ever had the chance to meet any of you, I’d have to decline. I now know what good understanding people you are and that this may still be possible, if your ever in my area, send me an e-mail.
Zach it would have been tough to tell the truth but I’m glad you did. This is a steep learning curve for you but I hope that you now move forward and use this experience to guide you in a positive way.
I’m sure that it was hard for you come forward, and I can see your reasoning for starting this in the first place. That being said, I think that whoever you are, you are still a railfan and will still have a welcome place in the forum.
You did have me fooled though, I have talked to you several times on IM and you never said anything to make me think anything different. All I can say is that you have done a lot of studying to be able to fool real railroaders and must really love the rails![:)]
Thank you for coming forward and telling us the truth. We all make mistakes, and
at some points in our lives tell lies. That’s just being human. And of course, you are
forgiven.
Now we can all get the know the Real Zach, who happens to be 14 years old.
You have learned a valuable lesson: Honesty pays. Good luck to you, and look
forward to seeing you on the forums still.
And thats the problem with lies, you have to keep telling the next one to back up the one you just told…after a while, its nothing but lies.
Kinda weighs on you, dosnt it?
So, this raises the question.
Are you really Zach, the 14 year old, or Zach, the 44 year old engineer?
The plot thickens…
Really, Zach, you decided to come clean, no harm really done, and your lucky that most of the people here are a pretty mellow bunch.
Heres a leson in all of this for you…
Look at how many young fans are on this forum, and how they are treated by the other members…
We understand they are young, and sometimes dont see the humor is some things, or dont understand what we are talking about.
And because they are young, and dont always get it, we try harder to make it clear to them.
So dont sweat it too bad, its not going to make many of the people here mad…
Thanks for fessing up Zach. I for one was skeptical and supicious when I read some of your posts. I know that there are a lot of young people who like to come and visit these forums, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
In the future, just be yourself!!! That’s difficult enough. It’s nice to see that you are growing up.[^]
By the way, the UP logo was a bit of a give away. No employee would do that.[swg]
…Those without sin cast the first stone…Congratulation Zach…Pretty hard to do, but now follow your concience and feel so much better. I’m sure fans on here will welcome your writings now with your real story. Just try to enjoy the forum. Again, congratulations.
[#ditto] To what everyone else has said. That took a lot of courage to do,and I respect
you for doing so. Enjoy being 14,not 44;you will get there faster than you think,and then
you will want to be 14 again. Just be the Zach at the age you are now.
No problem. Not to sure why you would want to be 44 though. I hear you get mid-life crisis at that age. I’m 24 years old right now and boy if I was 14 again the things I would fix up. I hope you do alot better than school than I did.
Anyways, nobody is perfect. We aren’t gods but it is nice to hear that people like you would rather be honest. Well done.[:)]
It’s really good to know that you’ve finally come clean about this. Don’t feel bad about it. We all do things like this in our lives and I’m sure that there isn’t any single member on this forum who hasn’t told a lie at some point in their life and regretted it because of the consequences. Some day you might actually become and engineer and when you are 44, look back on this and laugh. I understand how you feel and I wouldn’t worry about it any more, now that you’ve finally come clean. We’re all still your friends on here and still consider you to be valuable member of the forum. You haven’t hurt anyone by doing this and so now it is best to just let byegones be byegones and continue on with who you really are.
By the way, for a 14 year old, you are very mature for your age. Many other 14 year olds would have been noticed right away, but you did a pretty convincing job. You have certainly earned my sincere respect from all of this. Both how you managed to lie and your coming clean now shows that you have confidence in life and having said that, I’m sure that you will succeed in the future. Being 14 and saying that you are a 44 year old engineer is certainly no easy task, but you managed to do it. It’s hard to pretend to be someone that you aren’t. Have you ever considered becoming an actor?
That’s a pretty mature thing you did. Good on you. It may take a little time to regain credibilty with some members, but it will come. You have definitely driven home the point of anynomity and the Internet. You don’t know who any one is really other than a screen name and what they choose to post. A poster can be anyone they claim to be unless proven otherwise.
Zach, you have done the right thing, which I have found usually doesn’t feel very good most the time. But as I was once told, integrity means still doing the right thing when no one is watching.