Gerry Tales: How I Lived Happily Ever After, Despite Stabbing Myself in the Back, Scalding My Cojones, and Really Pissing Off My Wife During Childbirth

GERRY TALES

How I Lived Happily Ever After Despite Stabbing Myself in the Back, Scalding My Cojones, and Really Pissing Off My Wife During Childbirth

by

Gerry Boylan

Smashwords Edition

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Published on Smashwords by:

Synergy Books

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Austin, Texas 78755

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Gerry Tales

How I Lived Happily Ever After Despite Stabbing Myself in the Back, Scalding My Cojones, and Really Pissing Off My Wife During Childbirth

Copyright 2010 by Gerry Boylan

Illustrations by Joaquin Zarate

ISBN-13: 978-0-9843879-3-9

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Buns-Up Baby Jesus

Scar Stories

A Day on Lawson Street

A Harbinger

Cojones de Fuego

Smoke

The Bell

Birth of a Daughter

Discipline

The Pool Incident

Idiocy

A Hamster’s Hamster

Travel

Pure Sports

Dan Boylan’s Wild World of Sports

Table Manners

Business Is Funny

Mona and Lisa

Eduardo Has No Clothes

The Entrepreneur’s Apologist

The Jogging Woman

Counting Blessings

I Got It From My Mama

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Preface

Writing fiction may be more fun, but true stories are funnier! I have learned that everyone remembers the stories of our lives just a little bit differently, but what Irishman would let a few facts get in the way of a good story? While some of the stories in this collection are very accurate, others are more… directionally accurate, to coin a term.

I’ve tried to tell a few good yarns, and clearly there would be no stories without the family and friends who populate these pages. My family has always been there for me, even when I went to great lengths to distance myself from them. Always knowing you have a home is the most valuable safety net. I will always be grateful beyond words for my mom and dad and brothers and sisters, who were there to catch me.

The launching pad for the good fortune I’ve had in my life was meeting Kathy and raising a family with her.

I found my purpose in life, and it changed everything. We recently drove by the tiny cabin where our youngest daughter was born and sat outside looking back at where we came from. It’s a long way back, filled with way more laughter than tears. We built a life. In these stories, you’ll be introduced to our children: Shannon, Moira, Joe, and Dan. While they no longer live with Kathy and me, they remain the focus of our lives. A parent’s worries for their children never end, but neither does the joy.

I am deeply thankful for the blessings of family and friends. Because of them, I am a happy man.

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Introduction

Bigger! Better! More wit! Funnier! More laughs per paragraph! Who wouldn’t want to read Gerry Tales? I hope any of these descriptions are true about this collection of short stories. The truth is that only you, the reader, can make those claims. I’m just giving the bigger and better label a test run for a potential marketing campaign.

I was in New York this past weekend, and I was reflecting back on being stuck first at LaGuardia Airport and then at a hotel in Newark while I waited out the Northeast Blackout of 2003. I was just six people from the security screener in LaGuardia when the grid went down, and from that bad stroke of luck, I found myself in a pink gypsy cab headed for Newark.

I ended up in a hotel blessed with both a working generator and a gospel choir convention that, as you might expect, was not fazed in the slightest by the black-out. It actually increased their fervor as they congregated in the lobby to sing out to the Lord. I caught the fever, raised my briefcase, and said, Hallelujah! on my way to the elevator.

At four in the morning, I woke up, and, unable to get back to sleep, I turned on the television. It was tuned to a channel that was broadcasting a half-hour infomercial dedicated solely to penile enlargement. At first I thought I was dreaming as I watched the earnest, bespectacled spokesman look into the camera and inquire, Who wouldn’t want to be bigger?

Who indeed! As the infomercial continued, there was a series of increasingly enthusiastic testimonials from wives, girlfriends, mistresses, athletes, senior citizens, big people, little people, and even a clergyman and a rabbi, all of whom finished their pitches with the same refrain: Who wouldn’t want to be bigger? To even consider answering that question in the negative was sheer folly, according to these television persuaders. At the end of the commercial, the entire group gathered together and in unison shouted the question: "Who wouldn’t want to be bigger?"

Of course, even though they demanded an answer, we all know the silent and brilliant truth.

If only my writing were able to focus that luminescence on my readers so that the answer was the same to the question, Who wouldn’t want to read more of Gerry’s stories? Hey, it’s something to shoot for.

While writing the following stories, I took a shot at providing a little something for everyone. There are stories about growing up, families, business, men acting badly, and more…but, lamentably, no sex! Yep, this intro is just a big tease. My bet is you’ll see someone you recognize, maybe Uncle Pete or Aunt Betty, Cousin Bertha or Brother Bill. I hope you find someone you like and have a laugh. The best laugh is the one we have on ourselves.

My daughter Moira, who is a high school history teacher in a New York City suburb, wrote on her Facebook page, If you want to know why I am the way I am, read my dad’s stories on his web site. It’s no wonder that we’re all a little crazy!

I think Moira’s comment was a compliment, but you’ll be the judge of that. More importantly, I think she’s on to something. There’s more than a smidgen of eccentricity scattered throughout our childhoods, and it follows us for the rest of our lives. I contend it’s a good thing and keeps life interesting. And oh, the stories we get to tell! These are mine.

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Buns-Up Baby Jesus

I was raised a Roman Catholic when the Church resembled a linebacker from the Chicago Bears: tough as nails and reliable as Maytag, and when you made it angry, the result was clear, immediate, and had the kick of a mule. I fell away decades ago, but I still return for visits to take in the grand rituals of my youth, which are stamped into me like an old scar. The smell of incense being shaken by a priest around a coffin at mass can vault me back to my youth like nothing else. When I open the ponderous doors of my parish church and enter the cool dampness of the church’s vestibule, I am a boy again.

St. Mary’s Catholic Church was built with perfect timing to capture the rapidly growing baby boomer birth explosion of the 1950s. No need for birth control here. The pastor, Father Cairns, was tough, wily, and financially astute. If you didn’t tithe your 10 percent, he’d announce your name in church. The limestone church he built was long, narrow, tall, sturdy, and necessarily austere, but warmed by the light from the fourteen stained glass windows high on the south and north walls and the large, oval, stained glass portrait of the Madonna high on the west wall above the altar. South Royal Oak was working-middle-class, and this church was just a cut above most of the south-side parishioners’ expectations. Something to be proud of, reasoned Father Cairns.

You started going to church at an early age in the late 1950s. While a crying room hidden behind tinted, sound-proof glass near the altar was available, after age three or four, you sat with your parents and siblings. The families were so large that many would take up an entire pew (one of my favorite words, pew). My very first church memory was the smell of incense and little baby O’Connor throwing up into the center aisle, creating a splash on the marble floor that hit churchgoers on both sides of the aisle, and then the sound of his retching dry heaves until he was hustled out of the church still dripping.

I hit the big leagues of church when I was in second grade at St. Mary’s Elementary School. I was picked for the big honor of delivering the Baby Jesus to the manger of the crèche at the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. The second-grade teachers and the principal made the choice, and Father Cairns approved it (I assume our family had to be current in their tithing obligations). I was told this was the very pinnacle of the Catholic experience: High Mass, Christmas Eve, church fully adorned, full choir in the loft, full house, Christ is born! Gloria in excelsis Deo, baby!

So I found myself at the back of the church in the middle of a procession filled with priests, deacons, and heavy tithers at 11:59 p.m., Tuesday, December 24, 1960. I was seven years old and had never stayed up past nine. I was tired and cranky, but I still knew this was the big time. Dressed up in a mini-altar-boy cassock with the Son of God in my arms, I’m pretty sure this was where my ego met my id.

We entered the church at the stroke of midnight with the steeple bells answering the choir. Sister Dennis Margaret, my second-grade teacher and patron, patted me on my brush-cut head, and the procession began. It was a long way from the vestibule to the front of the church, where the crèche was positioned just under the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary with her arms outstretched. God, it was hot in that too-long altar-boy robe, which had been pinned up to fit me. I began missing the majesty of the moment about halfway up the aisle as the cassock hem pins started catching my pants and sticking me like burrs. The Baby Jesus was getting pretty heavy, and I was starting to sweat. By the time we reached the steps leading to the altar, I just wanted to go home and go to bed.

Father Cairns steered me toward the Nativity scene to the right of the altar. I looked over my shoulder at the crowd. Every voice was lifted in song, every prayer book held high. Hey, there was Mr. and Mrs. Bean, and Margaret and Mary from the cafeteria. Even Mr. O’Neal was there. I didn’t even know he was Catholic. While I didn’t know who Frank Capra and Norman Rockwell were at that age, this was the prototype for their style of Christmas Eve church scenes.

I turned and walked in front of the manger as we had rehearsed that morning. All of the lifelike ceramic figurines of shepherds and wise men were in place and serene. I climbed up the steps and gently deposited the Holy Infant in the crèche. Noel, Noel! Born is the king of Israel! the church boomed. I bowed as I had been instructed and started backing down the stairs as my own unrehearsed touch.

What happened next had to be reconstructed for me by my big sister, Sue. I felt like I was in a slow-motion silent movie as I backed down the stairs. My feet got caught up in the back of the cassock, and I started to fall backward.

Gerry, Sue told me, you looked like a chicken trying to fly. You almost kept your balance as you came down those stairs backward, but you hit the front of the first pew and flew over—right into Sister Mary Leo’s lap. That was funny enough to get the first few rows laughing, but then the youngest Moran kid pointed at the manger and said, ‘Hey look, Baby Jesus’s buns are up!’ People were laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes.

Unfortunately, I had placed the Holy Infant face-down in the crèche with his arms outstretched and his bottom shooting straight into the air—Buns-up Baby Jesus, as it was later remembered. The laughter pealed through the pews to the choir loft as those in back craned to hear the passed-back murmur of buns up! From Sister Mary Leo’s lap, I did notice Father Cairns, with his head in his hands, walk to the cradle and turn the Babe over so that the palms of the child were up and the light from the manger was shining on the face of the serene china Infant of God.

My dad plucked me out of Sister Mary Leo’s lap, and I put my head on his shoulder as he carried me out of the church. I was too young and tired to be mortified. My dad brought me home and tucked me into bed. He stroked my head, and I fell asleep to him saying, No ifs, ands, or buts about it, Gerry. Tonight proved that God must have a sense of humor.

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Scar Stories

My godson walked toward our budding sand-castle, carrying a bright orange pail filled with water retrieved from the shoreline waves of Lake Michigan. I sat next to the two-story castle as the creative consultant. Two-year-old Liam caught his toe on a stone, and pail, water, and godson all splashed into my arms, accompanied by only a few tears and a hug. He pulled back from my lap and caught sight of the ridge on my neck. He traced the fading pinkish crease with his miniature finger.

What’s that? he asked.

Well, young lad, that’s scar number two.

What’s a scar?

It’s a memento that tells a story.

What’s that mean?

Ah, that’s a good question, Liam, my man. The story of this scar is: I outran a gang of greasers, but then I lost a fight with a barbed wire fence.

Do you have other scars?

"Yes, I do. Here’s