Chapter One: My First Steps Towards Idiocy
My mother brushed my teeth until I was eleven years old. I’m not kidding; she literally put me in a headlock and scrubbed my teeth to perfection. I can attest that her technique was solid because my childhood was cavity free.
Finally, when I was in my teens and old enough to do the job myself, my mother turned into an investigator. If I skipped brushing my teeth she knew. Even if I ran my toothbrush under the water she still was able to figure it out that I didn’t brush. You would think after going through the time to run my toothbrush under the faucet, I would just brush my teeth.
I would leave the house and within minutes she would yell out the window, “Dannyboy, get back here and brush your teeth.”
It was a great feeling to have all the neighborhood kids know I was lazy.
Once or twice she actually drove to the bus stop and forced me into the car to go home and brush. Her strategy ended up working and I eventually became an adult in the oral hygiene department.
I always found it amusing that my parents were so strict with certain things and so lenient in others. For example my mother didn’t like me watching horror movies but she let me go terrorize our peaceful neighborhood of Whitehouse Station, NJ for “Mischief Night.”
Mischief Night was what some call Devil’s Night depending where you live in the U.S. It fell on the night before Halloween. Armed with toilet paper and eggs, my friends and I destroyed our neighborhood and made the biggest mess. We toilet papered trees and hosed them down, we threw dog shit at moving cars, spray painted horrible things on street signs and caused a fair amount of damage to local property. It didn’t matter if it was public or private property, we were equal opportunity vandals.
My mom and my friend’s parents actually encouraged this behavior. Maybe not to the extreme we took it, of course, but it was my mother that gave us the eggs. The spray paint and dog shit was our little addition.
If a kid tried to pull that sort of hooligan behavior today, he would be up a creek without a paddle. Can you imagine what kind of trouble a kid in this day and age would get into if he lit a dumpster on fire or got caught throwing glass bottles at trains?
I was lucky to grow up with amazing parents, a typical pain in the ass little sister, and the most loving and generous extended family. My parents spoiled me, but to their credit, they also taught me humility. My mother was sort of a hippy and my father was a straight-up badass.
While my mother was dragging me to anti-incinerator protests and teaching me how to question what I thought was right and wrong in the world around me, my pop was teaching me how to field dress a deer. It was survival of the fittest, smartest, and those with the cleanest teeth.
They were complete opposites, but they wanted us to grow up the right way. My parents provided a great life for my sister and myself, and did a great job raising us.
So please, whatever you do, don’t blame them for what you are about to read.
copyright Total Gavone Publishing 2016
