Why We Suck (6 page)

    

    Just wanted to make sure you were still paying attention. If you went right from the table of contents to this chapter-you screwed yourself.

    Because I didn't sleep with Kathie Lee Gifford. But in the first chapter of this book-"Why Everyone Hates Us"-I mentioned you by name.

    So anyways-back to raising kids:

    I called my mom just now to gain her perspective on what is necessary in terms of hitting or not hitting children. Let me describe her to you: if you put Mary Tyler Moore, Mother Teresa and Joe Pesci in a blender, set it on high and let it mix up to a fine, thick chocolatey shake-out would step my mom. She's eighty-one years old but looks like she's sixty, has the energy of someone in their early forties and will kiss you one second, kid you another and threaten to kick your ass the next. I love her. For many reasons. Some of which you are about to witness:

    [the phone rings several times]

    Hello.

    Hey Ma.

    Johnny?

    No. It's Denis.

    Oh, Denis. (laughing) How are you?

    I'm good. Hey Ma Mrs. Timmons died of cancer.

    Who?

    Mrs. Timmons, down the street. Remember I think you and Tommy Barolli egged her house one time?

    That wasn't us. I told you Dead as a doornail. Smoked four packs a day. Same thing with Mr. Willoughby from up on Edlin Street. He had horrible cancer.

    Is there good cancer?

    That's not funny, Brian. Quit that smoking.

    It's Denis, Ma.

    I know who it is. Uncle Jerry's got terrible pain in his back again God help us that that's not some kind of tumor or something and do you remember Jimmy Hanrahan used to work with Daddy?

    Big Jimmy?

    Yes. The father.

    Yeah.

    He has brain cancer.

    From smoking?

    No-he never smoked. Never drank either. Straight as an arrow Jimmy Hanrahan.

    What about Little Jimmy?

    The son?

    Yeah.

    Oh God. He died last year. Terrible cancer.

    So-is there a difference between the terrible cancer and the horrible cancer?

    (stop making fun of me) Denis.

    (still making fun) Ma.

    What are you calling for?

    I'm just wondering-when we were kids-how often you and Dad used to hit us.

    (suspicious) Why?

    I was just curious.

    Well-your father one time when you kids were small Johnny forged his name on some paper at school and the nuns called up about it and I told Daddy that you know he had to set an example with all these kids because this could be the beginning of some bad behavior here so we got all you kids gathered up in the hallway and he took Johnny into the bathroom and I think he used his belt but anyways he gave him a good couple of whacks in the bathroom with the door closed and I think the message got across and that was that.

    I remember that.

    You do? Well then I guess it did what it was supposed to do. Kids are the house that they come out of Denis-whatever goes on inside that house that's the way the kids're going to behave when they go out into the world.

    Dad used his belt-what would you use when you hit us?

    Whatever I had in my hand. I dunno. I really had to hit you and Betsy. The two of you-you two were always getting into some kind of cadology.

    Okay.

    Okay?

    Okay, Ma.

    That's it?

    Yup.

    You know Brian Leary hasn't had a cigarette in almost fifteen years now?

    I know.

    He rides bikes all the time in races.

    I know.

    Okay then, honey-thanks for calling.

    Okay, Ma.

    Bye.

    CLICK.

    

    (Let me just take a moment here to note: the word "cadology" was one my mother threw around the house on a daily basis. Cut the cadology, knock it off with the cadology, yer not kidding anyone with that load of cadology-these were just a few of the variations we heard throughout our lives. We just assumed it was an Irish word. My parents had learned Gaelic when they were in school and my father was very fond of the word "ammodon"-our spelling-which as far as we could tell was Irish for asshole or jackass because everyone he referred to as an ammodon was, in fact, an asshole or a jackass or a clear combination of both. Cadology sounded like it was connected to science and maybe a behavioral science but that would seem out of character for my mom. After this conversation with her I looked it up in an online dictionary. Nothing. So I tried the big giant hulking eight-pound Webster's dictionary I keep at my feet when I'm writing. Nothing. Now I am beginning to believe my mother just made the word up-a pleasant and lilting term she decided to toss around perhaps just as a way to confuse us. I check Merriam Webster Online. Nothing. I Google the Google Thesaurus. Type in "nonsense." Cadology does not come up. I change the spelling-codology. Merriam Webster Online-nada. Big Hulking Eight-Pound Webster? Nope. My Irish-English Dictionary? Not a chance. English-Irish? Forget it. Irish-English and English-Irish Online? Not there. I even went to Encyclopaedia Britannica-which is a goddam encyclopedia from fucking BRITAIN-where they pretty much invented words. No codology. Finally I call my sister Ann Marie and get her husband Neil-who I will speak further of much further on-and he says that my Ann told his Ann that I'm working on the book but that reminds him about my cousin Ann who we have to call Nancy because there are too many Anns in the family on this side of the Atlantic but anyways Nancy whose Ann ran into my cousin Betty Ann who was talking to one of my Aunt Anns in Ireland and she had just used the term "codology" in reference to her daughter Ann's baby Mary Ann and that's the point at which my head almost exploded. So Neil went to a website called World Wide Words while he was telling me this because he said whenever my mother uses a word that he doesn't know he skips all the normal sources and goes right to this place and sure enough-there it was:

    Codology.

    H. V. Morton in 1930 wrote that codology was "a science unknown to us in England which involved individuals or entire villages performing a joke, hoax or parody at the expense of an Englishman. Derives from the term 'cod' which is Irish for 'bunk.' "

    So it was, in fact, a science. A science of bullshit that my mother was clearly trained to identify and defame. Goddam those British bastards. If they had never invaded Ireland then the villagers would never have had to come up with what was essentially a clever game to employ when wishing to evade questioning and the giving up of important information and it wouldn't have been handed down from generation to generation so my mother would never have witnessed it being used as a child and therefore become privy to all the nuances and tricks and nervous tics and tells involved in the process of putting one over on somebody else and I, most importantly of all, would have gotten away with a lot more shit. Other favorites of hers included rigamarole, hooliganism and cahoots. All three of which-along with codology-were fired at us, I realize now, whenever we did try to lie, cheat, steal and/or bullshit our way around her set of rules. Dammit. She knew what she was talking about. Okay-back to the beating.)

    I have definite and vitally bright images of that beating in the bathroom she is referring to-so gathering us around to watch Johnny getting dragged in there and the sounds of him getting hit with that belt more than certainly did their job. After that, I don't think my dad ever had to administer another belt beating-all he had to do was threaten to take it off or begin to unbuckle it.

    And I distinctly remember how my mom would whack us on the knuckles with a hair brush or a wooden spoon or even a dough roller-whatever she happened to have in hand when we got on her nerves. She was like a Ninja Mom-suddenly springing on you with a fork or a can of Spam or a whole cucumber. My mom was like Rachel Ray on steroids: she would be chopping up some carrots one second and then furiously mugging you with a Crock-Pot cover the next.

    My dad? All my mom needed to say was "Wait until your father hears about this." Yeah-that's right. Until he HEARS about this. Most kids receive the "Wait until your father gets home"-which usually meant you had at least a few hours to come up with a different story or maybe move a few facts in the story around a little bit. Embellish. Rehearse. But my dad was a mechanic and he worked in a garage about five minutes from the apartment so all Ma had to do was pick up the phone and about seven minutes later he was headed up the back stairs-removing the belt from his pants as he did so. Your ass would start hurting just watching him.

    Let's put it in plain, blunt verse: if someone punched me hard in the face every time I lit up a cigarette I'd either have to start smoking while wearing a football helmet or just quit smoking. The same Pavlovian dog rule applies to kids-anything they get hit for doing you can be damn sure they will not wish to do again. No pain? No gain.

    The state of Massachusetts recently considered a bill brought by its Joint Committee On Children that would become the country's first ban on corporal punishment of kids. It cost several million dollars.

    (This reminds me-by the way-of the study done two years ago-again costing millions of dollars-to find out that being in a rock 'n' roll band actually shortens your life span. Yeah. They had to spend that much to figure out that being in a band increases your alcohol and drug intake and places undue stress on the heart, lungs etcetera etcetera. Not to mention being married to Courtney Love. That REALLY shortens your life span. Especially if there's a shotgun in the house.)

    So Taxachusetts actually spent millions of dollars of taxpayers' money and an unbelievable amount of absolutely wasted time to figure out that whacking kids on the ass or across the back of the head not only makes them cry-it strikes the fear of God into them. This is roughly equivalent to spending seven million dollars and sixteen months to find out that sticking your hand in a fire not only hurts like hell-it sears the flesh and almost certainly guarantees you will never ever ever ever do it again.

    What the fuck is getting a good hard kick in the ass or a sharp swack across your skull SUPPOSED to do? Make you ask for more? For every action there is an equal and opposite REaction-in this case? Whatever the fuck you just did wrong you sure as hell won't do wrong again.

    Unless you actually LIKE the pain, in which case the physical abuse becomes a defendable form of medical research: your honor, by smacking my son several times over the course of the last three weeks I was able to discover that he is, in fact, some kind of pain freak.

    Shit-when I was a kid even school wasn't a safe haven. The nuns would whack you with any weapon available-a ruler, a stapler, their hands. I had a nun wallop me across the back of my head one time because I couldn't come up with seven of the ten commandments. She hit me with a Bible. I asked her if thou shalt not hit a kid with the holy book was one of the seven I had missed. The class laughed. She hit me with the Bible again. It was worth the pain.

    Even if the nuns hit you for no good reason your parents always took their side. "They wouldn't be hitting you unless you were doing something wrong! They're nuns fa crissakes! They're married ta God!"

    My mother always took the side of the nuns AND the priests. Of course, my brother Johnny and I didn't really give her any reason to think we were innocent of any given charges. If there was a stupid plan to be hatched-egging the convent or stealing a priest's wallet or drinking the holy wine (I wanted to see if it actually made me act more like Jesus, which-if He was a giggling, sneaky, bumbling mess-it did)-my brother and I were, generally speaking, somehow involved. And once we established that kind of reputation, my mother's trust was pretty much broken beyond resolve.

    It always cracks me up when you see the mom of some guy who's been accused of some horrible crime on the TV news. No matter what the guy may have done or how guilty he may seem there's always one person left on God's green earth who thinks he's not guilty-his mom. Murder, grand theft, fraud-you name it. The guy could be convicted and rotting in jail and after everyone including his wife and kids had given up and decided he was guilty-his mom would always feel the opposite. If O.J.'s mom were still around she would be telling anyone who asked and even those who didn't how her son could never have murdered Nicole.

    Not my mom. Whatever the charges brought happened to be-even if they accused me of assassinating the sitting president-point a camera in my mom's face and the first thing she would say is "he did it." Followed by "And I'll bet if you dig a little deeper you'll find this is just the tip of the goddam iceberg. I'm sure he's got something to do with this whole global warming crap. I wouldn't put anything past this kid. He's trouble with a capital T. I wouldn't be surprised to find out HE was the one who killed O.J.'s wife."

    Most moms I know and have met feel that the women who marry their sons will never measure up to expectations. Not my mom. She couldn't believe I came home with my wife. I think-for the first couple of visits anyway-she thought I was drugging Ann or possibly even blackmailing her. Of course, she's right. Not about the drugging. About the chances that I would have won the heart of a woman as bright, funny and beautiful as my wife. The odds were very much against me. I really had to turn on the charm. And the drugs didn't hurt. I'm kidding. I've often thought if my wife and I ever got divorced, I'd have to fight the courts for visitation rights-to keep my mom from visiting Ann.

    Of course we want our kids to have a better life than we had but in this country things have gotten out of control. My parents were born and raised on farms in County Kerry, Ireland. They literally made the proverbial five-mile trek to school on foot every morning and the same five miles back every afternoon. When my mom told my wife about this my wife asked, "Didn't your dad ever come and pick you up?" My mother said yes, which led my wife to exhale a sigh of relief.