I was thinking about my father today. He passed away last June at age ninety-one. When he was dying, he said to me over and over, "This is really awful," like he couldn't believe how bad he felt. My mother? She passed away the year before at ninety-one also. She was ready. She kept telling everyone that she was ready to die. But she was always very practical and she also didn't want to be a burden. My sister is dead, too. Cancer. Misdiagnosis and then it spread. My parents said that they weren't the type to sue people. That's their generation. I would have owned that fucking hospital.
My parents were very cool. They were very proper. My dad was a professor and my mom was an english teacher. My dad was brilliant. My mom wasn't as smart but she could teach her ass off. Still smart but not genius shit like my dad. They came from nothing but they were super aware of manners and how to act. No t-shirts at the dinner table, don't eat until my mother lifts her fork. How about that shit? My sister and I hated it then, but now, I am glad that they were like that. It's easy to be uncouth and shit, like I am now, but it's hard to be good like they were. And they were consistent. Always "Please" and "Thank you" and no yelling in the house. My sister was 3 years older than me and she took me everywhere and I was a royal pain in the ass. When I was homesick in college she sent me a package very day. Every freaking day for a whole semester, my sister sent me letters and newspapers and all the news from home. I treated her okay, I guess. But then as she got older she started to have some problems and I sort of became her older brother.
We didn't act silly in my house growing up.
No giggling and whispering, no talking like a baby, no slang, no cursing, no double entendres. You didn't say "pee" like a baby, you said, "urinate". I would be at my friend's house and say that I had to urinate and the parents didn't know what the word meant. I'm serious. There was no bathroom humor and no watching shows like Happy Days and Welcome Back Kotter or Three's Company. And no Brady Bunch. Especially not the Brady Bunch with the kids getting mad and leaving the dinner table when they got mad in a huff. My sister did that once and we all started laughing our asses off. Nobody asked her what was wrong, and if she was okay. We just laughed. And the dad on Brady Bunch was all soft and shit. Kids would come to school and talk about what Vinnie Barbarino did the night before on Welcome Back Kotter and I didn't know what they were referring to. My parents went out one night and my sister and I watched Happy Days and when they came home, I had my hair slicked back like the Fonz. Shit hit the fan.
And the humor on those shows was easy, silly humor.
There was no acting silly in athletics. No celebrating, no taunting, always shake hands. I think that is why I hate all that dancing around shit they do now in athletics. Weird and silly to me. Men do not fucking dance. Slow dance only and infrequently. I saw a special on TV before an NFL game and they showed how a team of NFL players choreographed their end zone dance. Folks, the NFL has jumped the motherfucking shark. It used to be stories about an NFL player doing martial arts or about how hard a player hit in the game. Or Buddy Ryan.
My parents didn't drink alcohol. Guests could drink, but they usually didn't. I remember some dudes from Canada at the house watching hockey and drinking beer one time. My mom had beer like Shaeffer and Schlitz for guests.
We had a guy pumping out the septic tank one day and my dad gave him a beer, an off-brand that my mother had purchased for guests. And the guy says, "Your wife don't buy beer much, do she?" That we were allowed to laugh at. My grandfather drank a bunch, but my dad never did. In fact, I remember family reunions and all the old Scottish Steel's drank. Highballs or some nasty mixed drink. I wasn't too bright so I would steal beer and since they didn't drink it, they would notice. I stole some beer and went into my bedroom to drink it and broke the bottle. My dad didn't say anything until the next day. He said, "What's with stealing the beer?" I was in seventh grade. Another time I stole a bunch of vodka and gin and mixed them with orange juice and Pepsi. You know these big glass returnable Pepsi bottles in the old days, I mixed that liquor with 4 of them. This was the day before eighth grade. We started young in Maryland.
Anyway, I mixed all that up and went down to the creek behind my house with two friends of mine, Herb and Bert. They didn't drink much but I sure did. Down the hatch and I was sitting down the whole time. When I tried to stand up, I fell down. Right on my ass. My parents were with my sister in hospital. She was having her appendix out. I get up to the house from the creek. I throw up in the bathtub, and then I pass out on my bed throwing up while lying there. My Dad comes home. I'm lying in puke, puke everywhere. This is a man who never drank a drop in his life and his 13-year-old son is blasted drunk. He asks if I've been drinking. He says he won't be mad. I tell him yes and he freaks the hell out. It was bad. And then my first big hangover on the first day of eighth grade. Oh, that was awful. So awful. My parents were probably freaking out when they were in bed that night. My mom was definitely freaking out.
My parents were educated but didn't make any money so I had kids around me that weren't into obeying laws and stuff. It was definitely an influence on my surroundings. And I joined in happily. But not my parents. My dad came home every night at 5 unless he was guest teaching somewhere like Salisbury State or the University of Delaware. Mom stayed home when my sister and I were young and then went back to work as an English teacher. At night, my Dad would watch sports in his chair and Mom would grade papers and read. She was always reading. They would watch all these shows from England because they used to travel there as students. We couldn't make any noise when they were watching "Masterpiece Theatre", some English show. No flushing the toilet or talking.
I have to admit that it was a good way to grow up and it was different than any other of my friend's families. My two best friend's fathers had different jobs than my dad did. One was a waiter, another an electrician. Everybody's mom stayed home except the single moms, no matter how poor the family was on one salary. It was the way that it was back then in the 70's. Some moms sold Tupperware or Avon. My mom didn't go back to teaching school until I was in junior high school. I was a 70's and 80's kid and that's how it was with most of my friend's families also. Dad went to work, and Mom stayed home. Everyone had a house, a car or two, and went on vacation once a year to Ocean City, Maryland. Nobody was poor, just didn't have extra money lying around. Most of the fathers of my friends on my youth football team were beer drinkers and cigarette smokers. They'd hang out at Phil's Bar and Grill in Beltsville, Maryland, and talk football.
Men back then were rough and tough and worked very hard. My dad was a professor, but he was a blue-collar guy, always building walls with rocks from a quarry that he went and got by himself, working in his garden, changing his tires, and stuff like that. He was never sitting around, except when Maryland was playing either live or on TV. We went to all the games, football and basketball. Other fathers didn't exercise like my dad did, he was a crazy athlete and excelled at tennis and basketball. A lot of my parents' friends were rich. Rich people had a tendency to play tennis. Since my parents were educated, they could keep up with those Ivy Leaguers.
I am trying to figure out how they could keep that stuff up for all those years. No arguing, no cursing, no drinking, no staying out, nothing. I can't make it 10 minutes without calling my kids assholes. Part of it, I figure was that we weren't around our parents much when growing up. We came home from school and weren't allowed in the house until dark. We went everywhere: woods, main highways, people's houses that we didn't know. Our parents had no idea where we were. I know where my kids are every second that they are away from me, and honestly, that sucks. Something about the feedom that we had growing up. Kids these days are so messed up. They are all messed up, believe me. I'm right in the the thick of all this shit today. Fuck the phones, get outside and be cold and hot and scared and joyful and tired to the bone from running around.
Life is funny sometimes. Everyone has stories about life and experiences, all so different and unique. And all of it combined made them into who they are today. Crazy.
