Things your Dad usta say.

[ER]

"My boss got his job by bombing Cambodia into eggshells, so I try not to p**s him off too much."

[ER]

"Your Uncle Patrick punted a soccer ball into my solar plexus one time when I was wooing your mom and that doubled me over. Later he told me sorry about that, he always did kick higher than he was aiming for."

[ER]

"Were we poor when you were born? El, if movie tickets were a dime we couldn't have afforded to listen-in from the lobby."

[ER]

"The only thing your Aunt Jude hates worse than bigotry is bigots."

[ER]

Motivational Dad-Speech #847, given when I came home early from school very stressed one day circa 1990.

"I think you want an award for moaning about your life. What are you, eleven? Not even a teenager yet. Just wait til it gets hard. My first day on the job I was so nervous I missed the chair I went to sit down in and ended up on the floor, in front of my boss and his boss and six other people. The only thing I could think to say was, 'I been practicing that all week.' Nobody laughed at my joke. Now that was a rough day. Leaving your Bio folder in your locker isn't a rough day. What? Okay, yes throwing up between classes and not having any gum is worse, but what do you want, violins playing you sympathy? I told you that yogurt smoothie smelled funny. Didn't I tell you that? Why'd you want a yogurt smoothie that smelled like kumis some Mongol would drink on the steppes? Honestly, is your brain living in your baby toe these days?"

For the record I thought the smoothie smelled fine, and maybe pep talks like these clear up the mystery of why I left home at seventeen. 

[ER]

From circa 1990.

Me: Why is it bad to suggest Jewish people tend to have money? Isn't that a compliment?

My Dad: It's a stereotype and usually those are---

Me: True?

Dad:---impolite.

Me: But what if it is sort of true?

Dad: No, all Jews are not rich, in fact in New York I knew a Jewish guy who was so poor he lived in the cab he drove for a living, while waiting for his father to die and leave him his apartment building in Brooklyn.

Me: Well if he was waiting to inherit an apartment building, was he poor or was he pre-rich?

Dad: Will you just stop before B'nai Brith sends us a registered letter?

[ER]

This is one of my dad's charming "driving to school and sipping his coffee" stories from when I was a teenager. (No bus service in Catholic school.) I've always been afraid to ask if it was true or if he was just messing with my head, as usual.



When I was little, El, our teacher, Sister Agnes, got a stomach virus and missed two weeks of school, so for some reason instead of sending us a replacement nun they brought in a substitute  from the public system, Mrs. McDowell, who was super nice and we all liked her....except she was missing her left hand.

She didn't want us to be freaked out so she told us the story of how she lost it and showed us  how it looked and we all said we were okay with it, but secretly it bugged me and one day I found a paper I was supposed to have turned in the day before, so I went to her desk and said:

"This is late, Mrs. McDowell, can I still hand it in?"

And right when I said the words "hand it in" I felt my eyes jerk down to look where her hand was supposed to be and she saw me looking and all I could think to do was blurt out, "When I said 'hand' I didn't mean your hand, I meant hand in the paper!"

She said, "Yes, I know."

I felt like crawling back to my desk but she laughed about it and told me it was OK, and I really liked her a lot, and when I was in middle school and heard her foster son shot her I thought it was a damn shame.

What? Yeah, he murdered her. Why you looking at me like that? Where'd you think the story was going to go?

[Allhallowsday]

From circa 1990.
Me: Why is it bad to suggest Jewish people tend to have money? Isn't that a compliment?
My Dad: It's a stereotype and usually those are---
Me: True?
Dad:---impolite.
Me: But what if it is sort of true?
Dad: No, all Jews are not rich, in fact in New York I knew a Jewish guy who was so poor he lived in the cab he drove for a living, while waiting for his father to die and leave him his apartment building in Brooklyn.
Me: Well if he was waiting to inherit an apartment building, was he poor or was he pre-rich?
Dad: Will you just stop before B'nai Brith sends us a registered letter?

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[ER]

Hot off the press from today:

Me: What do ghosts smell like, I wonder?

My dad: Manure, alcohol, and a feverish desire for attention, whatever that smells like.

Me: And Casper?

Dad: The earth-streaked shroud his grieving parents buried him in, watered with their tears.

Me: That's messed up, man.

[ER]

This is not something my dad said, it's something he wrote to me, by hand, in a long letter he gave me when I turned twenty-one. He wrote me letters on all my major birthdays, and wrote one to my daughter when she turned ten last fall. He doesn't like emailing but he does like to write and has beautiful penmanship.

For better or worse I thought I'd share this:

"Three times in my life I thought I was a dead man, and one of those times in particular I should have been. But each time I came through alive I didn't find myself boosted in self-confidence, I found myself humbled. Each of those occasions changed me permanently and made me better as a result. I don't know why some live and some die, I only know that I felt incredibly humbled that I still had my life, and I think humility is the only fitting way to approach a life that is bigger than any of us."

[RCMerchant]

" You couldn't tell s**t from apple butter!"

" I'll hit you so hard your mother will feel it!"

That's a happy thought, you old scumbag!

[RCMerchant]

"What's that have to do with the price of tea in Red China?"

My Dad always said the same thing. Only it wasn't tea. It was eggs. What that meant- not a f**king clue. And it wasn't Red China- it was just China.

[ER]

If you put dirt in one hand and desire in the other, which hand will fill up faster?

[ER]

"Sneezes have killed people, farts have never hurt anybody directly."

[Alex]

My dad used to regularly tell me that the music from the 60's had been so good that it had to come back into fashion.

Then one day I asked why if it was so good how had it went out of fashion in the first place?