Need One

This post also appears on a Notre Dame blog (see link), but I thought some of my reader(s) might like it, too.

I can’t feel more like a loser.

It’s Friday afternoon. I’m hungover and sitting in my boxers with my black socks still on from last night. And now I’ve got the chorus to Crowded House’s “Been locked out” on repeat in my brain.

Ten minutes ago, a 20-year old kid gleefully told me I was “unsuccessful” in the Fiesta Bowl ticket lottery, which is a lot like saying Kerry took silver in 04.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. See, I’m connected.

Not in a “Patrick McCartan, I-can-get-one-of-the-only-four-black-coaches-in-America-fired” kinda way, but in a “I’ve-sat-on-the-fifty-with-Chuck-Lennon-against-BC-and-watched-the-aformentioned-coach-continue-to-believe-halftime-adjustments-are-illegal” kinda way. I can call Lou Nanni – well, I guess anybody can call Lou Nanni – and he sometimes calls me back. I’m hooked up.

Besides, I wear the jacket (see photo from the 04 USC game. The smiles tell me it was taken pre-game). At Notre Dame, we revere our athletic achievements with such reverence that we don’t have varsity letter winners; we have monogram winners (as I love to explain to anyone who will listen). I did not wrestle often. And I never wrestled well. In fact, guys on the team would get into fights over who got to wrestle me at the end of practice when they were exhausted. I got Reidy! But I still earned my monogram, which is SUPPOSED to give me some juice over normal students (some of whom probably could have beaten me in a wrestle-off for tickets). Yet, the 20-year old told me Monogram Club members got no special treatment in the Fiesta Lottery. First, I got no wrestling groupies (actually, none of us got wrestling groupies, which is a hazard of attending a school where women find guys with mangled ears unattractive). Now, I get no tickets. THEN WHY THE HELL DID I GET MY ASS KICKED EVERY DAY FOR FOUR YEARS???!!!

Perhaps this is karma, paying me back for missing a bowl game to which I had a ticket. In December 1991, four classmates and I drove down to New Orleans for a bowl of cereal with Steve Spurrier. Ah, The Big Easy. Just thinking about that glorious trip makes me want to hurl, for old times sake. I have since learned that I am allergic to Hurricanes (took three subsequent trips to confirm the diagnosis; I believe in being thorough, medically), but back then I couldn’t get enough of the sugary poison. And Cherry Bombs! What heavenly host planted the seed of inspiration for a man to soak marachino cherries in grain alcohol and then sell them on the street for a dollar apiece? Alas, there is a much steeper price to pay for such nectar. I woke up New Year’s morning on the floor of an “aromatic” room in the luxurious Day’s Inn, stepped over ten of my fellow thrifty buddies and found the bathroom. Where I spent the majority of the next eleven hours. It wasn’t so bad, though. I mean, I eventually had nothing left to vomit, so the last 160 minutes were just dry heaves (which is a great ab workout, by the way). But at least I could see the TV from the cold tile floor, so the day wasn’t a total loss. And my mom even believed me when I explained missing the last bowl game of my college career because, “I got a hold of some bad crawfish.” But then my Uncle Gary told her that was a euphemism for too much booze. He seemed upset later when I asked my aunt about that strange blonde lady I’d seen him kissing in NYC.

So now I need Santa to bring me a ticket. All I want for Christmas is to be hungover in a Tempe hotel room on January 3rd, sitting in my boxers and black socks.

Tis the season

The Christmas season brings back so many memories, most great, but some involving family, too.

This morning I recalled a shopping trip my dad and I took to the mall when I was seven. With the blissfulness of my only-child childhood still intact, I needed to get presents only for my parents and grandparents. I called my mom’s parents Oma and Opa, which was German for grandma and grandpa (you try pronouncing “Grossmutter” and “Grossvater”). My Oma was an angel walking amongst mortals and she deserved the greatest Christmas presents possible. To that end, I planned to give her the project I’d been working on in second grade art class: a “jewelry box,” aka wooden monstrosity only a grandmother could love. But even at that young age I was savvy with the ladies, aware that you can’t give a woman an empty jewelry box. Accordingly, I needed my dad to buy a “gold” chain for me to put in there. Which, historians have determined, was the origin of Namegate, the scandal from which The Reidy’s never recovered.

We stopped at the Bamberger’s (old school Macy’s type of store) jewelry counter. One glass case, in particular, caught my eye. It contained many necklaces, each of which had one of the letters of the alphabet. Sold.

“That one,” I said to the woman behind the counter, pointing to the letter O. She complimented me on my taste – probably gave my dad a big wink, too, the condescending bitch – and reached into the case. “Hold on, miss,” my dad interrupted.

“Jamie, why do you want to get O?” I explained that O stood for Oma. Rich Reidy smiled a silly boy smile and shook his head. “But that’s not Oma’s name.” He could have told me Oma had once played noseguard for the Pittsburgh Steelers and I would not have been as surprised as I was by this revelation. “You should get her an H.” My blank stare served as evidence that further explanation was required. “Her real name is Herta.” This was real news to me. I might have given him some leeway if he said her real name was “Mom,” since that’s what my parents called her, or “Momma,” which is what Opa called her. But, this “Hair-ta” thing…I wasn’t down with that.

“But I call her Oma. So I want to buy her an O.” We went back and forth for a few minutes until The Grinch, I mean, Rich decided he wanted to make his son cry in public. We got the H.

At Christmas, Oma raved about her new jewelry box – which she actually put on her dresser and used. God bless grandmothers! – and then opened the necklace. She put on a happy face, but I could tell she was disappointed. I did not hesitate. “I WANTED TO GET YOU AN ‘O’ BUT DADDY SAID NO AND MADE ME GET THE ‘H’!”

The room fell silent as Oma turned to my dad. “The O would have been fine, Richard.” Enjoy your dinner out in the garage, Dad.

But at least that episode didn’t nearly result in a holiday homicide, like a Christmas years later.

In the mid-80s, Ted Turner bought the rights to hundreds of old black and white movies with the intention of colorizing them. Legendary directors such as Orson Welles and Woody Allen promptly pilloried this idea. Almost as quickly, Rich Reidy ran out to buy a colorized version of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Dad announced that the movie premiere would take place on Christmas night in “the Reidy Family Theater,” which looked an awful lot like our rec room with the lights turned off. The undeniable highlight of the RFT was dad’s popcorn, the recipe to which he could have sold for millions if not for dire protests by the American Academy of Cardiology. Apparently, a 1:1 kernel to butter ratio was not considered “healthy.” It was, however, “yummy.” Years later, I figured out that RFT was simply a clever excuse for dad to make popcorn without mom nagging him. But, honey, it’s for the kids.

Dad was hyping this as the greatest RFT ever: not only was it Christmas (we were practically Jews, going to the movies on Dec 25th!) and not only was it the colorized version of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but it would be the first time Oma and Opa had experienced RFT! (It also may have been the first time Oma had ever been downstairs, which was a no-man’s land of toys, PB&J bread crusts and moldy carpet that deeply offended her German sense of order.) With all the elements of a fabled night in place, Dad turned off the “theater’s” lights.

Looking back, the first indication that something was amiss should have been the fact that the tape was already in the VCR. Sometimes, even the shrewdest of criminals make mistakes.

Dad pressed “play” on the remote and the full color credits started rolling. I looked over at my father, his chin shiny with buttery joy, and it occurred to me that I had never seen him so happy. And then it struck. The smooth picture was jumbled and then the 1940’s holiday music was replaced by dialogue that didn’t fit and then the IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE credits were replaced by a cartoon of…bears?

“What the…” Dad’s voice trailed off as he somehow remembered not to curse in front of Oma. In the chaos it was impossible for me to tell exactly how The Berenstein Bears Christmas special had begun playing on our TV. Not for Rich Reidy, though. Leaping to his feet as though a guy had pulled up in front of the house selling gyros two for a dollar, Dad flipped the lights on and lasered his sights on my surprisingly quiet eight-year old brother. “Patrick!” Dad spat.

In the history of the world, no person has ever done a poorer job of hiding his guilt than Patrick Joseph Reidy, II. Dad describes the scene: “There was your brother with his beady little eyes flitting furiously from side to side.” Investigators would determine that earlier on Christmas Day, the accused had been watching television when the aforementioned Ursus arctos syriacus family’s show aired unexpectedly. This excitement, combined with an overdose of sugar cookies, led the defendant to irrationally grab the nearest VCR tape in his haste to record this masterpiece of film. The prosecution didn’t buy the “crime of passion” defense, however, pointing out that Patrick had to rip off the plastic encasing the brand new IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE TAPE, thus giving him the time to recognize that the act he was about to commit was wrong.

Of course, the sweet irony in all this was the fact that Patrick was the only family member who knew how to work the “record” function on the VCR.

Patrick was sentenced to two Christmases of coal. Oma never ventured downstairs again. The sight of bears on TV still forces my dad to immediately push aside popcorn…and switch to ice cream.

Why do we even bother with the holidays? The horror, the horror.

Leave it to TVR

Have you seen the new ad for DirecTV with TVR?

It’s a heartwarming tribute to a father’s spending quality time with his son. A six-year old joyfully runs into the living room carrying a book and excitedly asks his dad to read him a story. Dad, though, is enraptured by a football game (a very modern scenario; the guy, obviously, is a single parent, as I don’t know many married dads who get to spend their Sundays chilling in front of the tube). But when the perceptive kid sees the game on TV, he stops in his tracks. “Oh…football” he says glumly, all-too-aware that story time is not a regularly scheduled program.

But, wait! What’s this? The father explains that he doesn’t mind turning off the game – way to sacrifice, Pops – just so he can read a story to his son with this inconvenient interest in books because Daddy “can stop time.” And wonder of wonders, Superdad picks up the remote and freezes the game. Then he starts it. Then he stops it. At this point, Junior has forgotten all about his stupid book and is leaning forward, eyes aglow. Dad can freeze time! “Do it again, Dad!” the boy crows. “Again. Again.” Son snuggles up next to dad and they "bedoop" the day away.

What a happy ending. Thank god for TVR available thru DirecTV! Otherwise, fathers across America might get stuck reading to their children. Whew! That was a close one. And as a bonus, now the kids are hooked on TV, too! Thank you DirecTV.

It warms my heart to know that my dad never would have shirked his reading responsibilities in favor of playing with TVR. He never could have worked the remote. This is a man who doesn’t turn his cell phone on unless he wants to make a call. Two years ago I went home to New York for Thanksgiving, only my parents were in Texas for the holiday. Interesting. My therapist says I’m over that, though, so let me continue with the story. I commandeered my dad’s Chevy Impala and drove into NYC to see some friends and immediately found a prime parking spot within a block of their apartment. “I don’t know why people complain so much about parking in this city,” I told my pals, who looked at me like they wanted to ask a question, but chose not to. The next morning, I stumbled out of the apartment and walked back to the spot, which was, strangely, wide open again. My bloodshot eyes were not the problem – the Impala was AWOL. I had parked in front of a synagogue, which, apparently, was not kosher. A professional Mover put down his dolly cart and wiped his forehead. “Blue four-door?” I nodded. “Yeah, they towed that, like, 15 minutes ago.” Good thing I had hit snooze three times.

If you’ve never had a car towed in New York City, I can tell you anything you need to know, as I’ve had a foreign car towed in summer (VW, 1995) and a domestic car towed in winter (Chevy, 2003). I guess I’ll have to buy a Harley in 2011. So, I dialed 911 and told them my car had been towed and the nice lady gave me the number of the lot at Chelsea Piers where they take all the idiots’ cars. But I had one problem, and it seemed like a big one: I didn’t know my dad’s license plate number. How was I going to get the car back when I couldn’t prove it was my car? Sure, all I had to do was call my parents in Texas, but I would have licked the floor in a corner of a NYC Subway terminal before informing them that their Country Mouse son had, once again, gotten a car towed in the city. There had to be another way. With my brother living in New Zealand and my sister in Austria, though, I didn’t have many options. I wandered the Upper West Side shivering and wracking my brain to devise a way out of this jam without my father ever knowing his car had gone on an adventure. Like Yukon Cornelius, I came up with nothing.

On Tuesday, November 25th, I failed to correctly time my call to my dad’s need to place a call and I went right to voice mail. “Uh, Dad, hi, uh, heh heh, I need the Chevy’s license plate number. Can you give me a call with it? Thanks. Tell mom I love her.” Then, numb with cold, I decided to head down to the lot and see if I could wing it. Turns out you don’t need to know the license number, since most people don’t know theirs. All that is needed is the make, model, color and zip code in which it’s registered – conveniently, all information I already possessed in my pea-sized brain. Doh!

Two weeks into that December, my father called, presumably regarding my flight information for Christmas. “Got towed again, huh?”