The Hardcore Diaries

by Foley, Mick

May 14, 2006

  Aboard American Airlines Flight #703

  en route to Dallas, where I will connect

  to Lubbock for tomorrow’s Raw

  Dear Hardcore Diary,

  My son Mickey is a religious zealot. Yeah, I know just last week I called him a rock-and-roller. He still is. But he’s a religious zealot, too. I don’t mean “zealot” in a bad way, even if I’m not sure it’s possible for that particular word to carry a positive connotation. I just mean he has a particularly keen interest in the life and teachings of Jesus—his birth and even more so, his death.

  The interest started inauspiciously enough, with a manger scene at Santa’s Village last fall—the same trip where I received the verbal smackdown from UNICEF. Until that point, Mickey and I had enjoyed a rather unique relationship when it came to Christmas, and especially Santa Claus. Mickey was that rare child who didn’t like Santa. I’m not talking about a kid who cries when placed on Santa’s lap—that’s a seasonal rite of passage that all my kids have been through. We cherish those photos of our kids bawling their eyes out when forced to sit on the lap of a strange fat guy. And, no, I’m not talking about me.

  But Mickey wasn’t afraid of Santa—he just didn’t like him. Actually, not liking him was less about genuine dislike and more about working an anti–Santa Claus gimmick in order to get a rise out of his Santa-loving dad. Seemingly every night, the little guy and I would perform a ludicrous ritual in which he would approach me slowly, a huge sparkle in his mischievous blue eyes. My heart would tingle every time I saw that look, for though it may have been the single dumbest act of bonding in the history of fathers and sons, it was, nonetheless, one that brought me great joy on a nightly basis.

  At first, his whisper would be inaudible, intentionally so. “Pss, pss, psss.”

  “What, I can’t hear you,” I’d say.

  “Pss, pss, psss.” Just a little louder. He would be positively beaming by this point.

  “I’m sorry, Mickey. I can’t hear you. Can you speak a little louder?”

  Without fail, he would fight to suppress his laughter, long enough to whisper, “I don’t like Santa Claus.”

  “What?” I’d say in an over-the-top display of shocked disbelief.

  “I don’t like Santa Claus.” Not even a whisper anymore. Just a genuine attempt to cause his dad deep emotional distress.

  “What…did…you…say?”

  I wish my writing could do justice to just how happy this routine made him. I’d reach out for him and apply the big tickle, dishing out punishment, demanding an immediate retraction.

  “Take it back. Take it back.” Occasionally he would take it back, just long enough to catch his breath, so he could start anew with more blasphemous big-guy berating.

  “I don’t like him! I don’t like him! I don’t like Santa Claus!”

  Obviously, it was all in fun. Mickey never really disliked St. Nick. But he honestly didn’t see the need for such a guy. After all, as he explained on many occasions, he had enough toys.

  “Mickey, what would you like for Christmas?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No, I have enough toys.”

  “I’m sure you must want something.”

  “No, that’s okay. I have enough.”

  Where had I gone wrong? How could I have raised such an unselfish child? What a poor reflection on me. “Come on, buddy, how about one toy?”

  “No, you can give it to someone else. I have enough.”

  All kidding aside, I was always touched by these little talks. I remember taking Dewey and Noelle to Kmart a few years ago, armed with a fistful of “wishes” of less fortunate families that I’d taken down from the church bulletin board. This was going to be my way of teaching my kids the real meaning of Christmas. Instead, about a half hour into this spiritual shopping experience, my kids both literally fell to the floor in tears, sobbing upon their discovery that the Kmart excursion would yield no personal treasure for them.

  In fairness to my two older kids, we tried the experiment a few years later, as volunteers for a great group called Christmas Magic, and this time Dewey and Noelle were more than up to the task, shopping and wrapping their little hearts out for the sake of kids they would never even meet.

  I was so proud of both of them. But also a little flabbergasted when, after doing so much work, they both came up to me and said, “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s Santa bringing us?”

  Man, my kids were ten and twelve at this point, legitimate contenders for Ripley’s Believe It or Not as the last kids on Earth to not catch on to the whole Santa deal. Hell, it had been earlier that year, on Easter eve, when exhausted by travel and faced with the prospect of pulling an all-nighter in the role of the Easter Bunny, I called Dewey over.

  “Dewey, you’re twelve, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you still think a rabbit travels the world, handing out eggs and candy?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Good, I need your help.”

  But I wasn’t going to be quite so quick to give up Santa. Sure, the whole Easter Bunny thing is ludicrous. But this was Santa, man! Santa! I tried to gently explain to my kids that in a way, by helping people out, we were kind of like Santa. We were doing Santa’s work.

  They just stared at me. “But what’s he bringing us?”

  I knew it was the right time. After all, I’d already had the talk with Dewey. You know, the talk. Birds. Bees. That talk. But somehow, an intelligent twelve-year-old who already knew about procreation, pregnancy, and premarital hanky-panky hadn’t deduced that reindeer couldn’t fly.

  So, I did what seemed right. I lied. “I’m sure Santa will think of something,” I said.

  Let’s get back to Santa’s Village. As we approached Santa’s house, the charming log cabin where Santa meets and greets his guests, I could sense that Mickey was a little apprehensive. We’d assured both him and little Hughie that they didn’t have to actually meet Santa—although one can never have too many photos of their children crying their eyes out on the big guy’s lap. I told the kids that we would simply walk past it.

  Mickey had other plans. Somehow, even at the tender age of four, he gathered the resilience, pride, and intestinal fortitude to make a heroic dash to Santa’s door. “I don’t like you, Santa Claus!” he yelled, before sprinting to the safety of his hysterically laughing parents.

  But Mickey’s whole idea of Christmas changed the moment he saw the life-size nativity scene. One by one the questions came.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s the Baby Jesus, buddy. He’s the reason we celebrate Christmas.”

  “Who’s that? I thought Jesus was something you said when you dropped something, ‘Oh Jesus.’” I swear he actually said that. I suppressed my laughter and said, “No, actually Jesus was God’s son.

  “That’s the Baby Jesus, buddy. He’s the reason we celebrate Christmas.”

  “Who’s that?” he said, pointing to a larger figure.

  “That’s Baby Jesus’ mother. Her name is Mary. And that’s her husband, Joseph. But he’s not Jesus’ father. God is Jesus’ father.”

  One after another the questions came. “How come? But why? But how?” Man, I’d been barely able to explain a regular conception to a twelve-year-old, let alone an immaculate one to a four-year-old.

  But I must have done okay, because little Mick’s interest never waned over the next few months. Eventually, he came to grudgingly accept that Santa was going to bring him a few gifts, although he did demand that Santa leave his stuff outside the front door. He was allowed to bring toys. He just wasn’t allowed inside the house. Which actually made the distribution of the gifts a snap. Ready, set, dump. Watch the Alaistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, which is sometimes called Scrooge. Wake Colette up, ask if she had a special gift for me. Accept humiliating rejection. Sleep until 3:30A .M., when the older kids complain that Santa h
asn’t shown up with the toys yet.

  Hughie, Mickey, Colette, me, and Noelle with the big guy, at my favorite place, Santa’s Village. (Dewey was working as an elf.)

  Courtesy of the Foley family.

  But Santa’s act was strictly secondary to little Mick’s fascination with Baby Jesus. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mickey completely grasped the idea that Jesus, at a certain point, stopped being a baby. Possibly I should have consulted a book or member of the clergy about how best to deal with the subject of the Easter celebration. Had I done so, the ensuing Easter talk may have been a little less confusing.

  “Daddy, what happened to Baby Jesus?”

  “Well, he died, buddy,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, uh, he, uh, died for our sins.” I knew as I said it that this was a little vague. Besides, at this point in his life Mickey’s sins had been pretty much limited to a little late-night bed-wetting, some massive fib-telling, and the previously mentioned verbal bombardment of Santa Claus.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “So that, um, whoever believed in him could have everlasting life.” Wow, now I was hitting a four-year-old with gospel teachings that even I don’t fully understand.

  In truth, this “Easter” talk took place some time in January, giving Mickey over three months to mull over my words. And every day, he wanted to know more—about the cross, the crucifixion, cemeteries, churches, even questioning the rationale of commemorating the death of the Messiah with the distribution of chocolate bunnies. Well, that’s not quite the way he put it. I think it was more like, “Why do we get chocolate when Baby Jesus dies? Why? Why are we happy when Baby Jesus dies? Why?”

  Mickey wasn’t happy about it at all. Colette saw him moping around the house, carrying the cross I’d received as a communion gift in 1984. Yeah, for those of you doing the math, I was a little old for communion; nineteen, to be exact. My dad, who has missed something like two Sunday masses in his life, never forced me to go to church—I started going on my own, and was communed and confirmed under the private instruction of Father Thomas McGlade, an absolutely wonderful man whose death still bothers me because I never told him in life what I’m writing right now.

  For a year or so, I even thought about the priesthood, before opting to travel down the pro wrestling road. I think I could have handled the vow of poverty—I took a similar one when I worked for Jerry Jarrett in Memphis—but the whole celibacy thing was another issue. Even in my prime I never had an insatiable sex drive, but damn, forever is a little longer than I was willing to go without.

  I considered myself something of a devout Catholic for the next ten years or so, until seeing a photo in Newsday (Long Island’s main newspaper) of the priest who married me and baptized my first child, underneath the bold headline “Pedophile.” I had been reeling a little from a string of problems in the Catholic Church—the denouncing of birth control despite overpopulation and starvation, the failure to allow priests to marry, the failure to deal with the obvious pedophilia problem—and the Newsday photo and story seemed to serve as a knockout blow. My churchgoing just kind of stopped. And while my faith in God never ceased, my faith in men acting in his name certainly did.

  A few days later, I noticed that Jesus was no longer in an upright position on my crucifix. He was dangling by one hand, like Sly Stallone in the climactic scene of Cliffhanger. The culprit was Mickey, who was doing his best to free Jesus from his death, although I thought I’d made it pretty clear that he had to die in order for us to live.

  Maybe a few of the books Colette got him cleared things up a little, because as he absorbed the lessons for the tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth time (the kid loves to be read to), he seemed to get the hang of Jesus’ life, even asking if we could reenact some of the more well known parts of the New Testament.

  So he’d say, “Dad, pretend to be blind, and I’ll be Jesus and heal you.” So I would stumble around the Christmas room until the little guy healed me in his own unique way, summoning the power of God as if he was Mr. Freeze unleashing a mighty blast of superfrozen molecules. And while I’m not an official biblical scholar (although I am staying at a Holiday Inn right now—I checked in about an hour ago), I’m willing to bet that Jesus’ healing miracle sound effects couldn’t compete with those of little Mick.

  One night, after returning home from the road, I asked the little guy if he’d like to see a movie. “I have a better idea,” he said. “How about we’ll play Jesus. You be Jesus, and I’ll be the bad guy and put you up on the cross.”

  And that’s just what we did. I laid down on our makeshift whiffle-ball bat and Captain Hook sword combination cross, and Mickey pretended to drive nails into my wrists. Yeah, I know that sounds a little morbid, but they were really just crayons placed between my fingers.

  Then it was my turn to be the bad guy, and I did my best to put my little guy on the cross, not knowing he intended to come back to life in fulfillment of the Scriptures. But I guess the subtlety of rising on the third day and appearing before his disciples had not been completely explored in his books. Jesus’ resurrection, little Mick style, resembled more of an Undertaker sit-up spot followed by a Hulk Hogan comeback. Yes, in the gospel according to little Mick, Jesus didn’t really love the sinners—he beat the bejesus out of them.

  Some days when I asked him what he wanted to do, he’d simply say, “Go to church,” without a moment’s hesitation. And believe me, it wasn’t as if we were pushing him into it—this was all of his own free will. When Mickey found out Dee Snider (the Twisted Sister guy) was recovering from throat surgery, he sent him a get-well card decked out with about a hundred crosses.

  Colette and I started wondering if God was trying to send us some kind of sign. Maybe our son was meant to answer some kind of calling. Maybe he’d be a great leader or inspirational preacher—if only we would take him to church instead of Chuck E. Cheese.

  Colette even suggested a family viewing of The Passion of the Christ, but I felt I had to draw the line somewhere. I didn’t think it was appropriate for a five-year-old, and said if Mickey really needed to see a bearded man bleeding profusely, being treated in an inhumane fashion, I could probably find a few of my old matches from Japan for him. But we really did feel like we needed to encourage his interest. So one Sunday, after a friend’s birthday party, I took him and Hughie on a little local church field trip.

  We visited a Presbyterian church that pre-dated the Revolutionary War, and a Methodist church right next to it that was over a hundred years old. We were invited into the Methodist church, and Mickey took it all in like an art enthusiast taking in his first LeRoy Neiman—oh, what a terrible example. We drove a few miles more so he could see the Lutheran church where I had gone to preschool, and even the Catholic church where I had received communion, learned so much, and then been so bitterly disillusioned.

  And through the eyes of my five-year-old son, I began to feel my faith being restored. For years I’d felt my conscience pulling at me, leading me into volunteer work, so as not to ignore the gifts that God had given me. As odd as it sounds, I do consider the exposure I’ve received from WWE, and the instant recognition it affords me, to be a gift from God. A gift that gives me the potential to help—a potential that really has to be used.

  I sometimes wonder if God really puts people in our lives for a reason, or if circumstance merely creates the potential to either use or ignore the gifts God gave us to make the most of any given situation.

  Since my estrangement from the Catholic Church, I had often thought about finding a church that was more consistent with my beliefs. But how? I’m sure there must be some method of finding a match, some kind of spiritual dating service to set you up with the right place. I remember stopping in on a church in rural Georgia when Dewey was just a baby. It was Sunday, we were new to the area, and we thought, “What the heck, we’ll just drop in.” At the time I wasn’t nearly as aware of the cultural differences that existed within different denomination
s of Christianity and within our social and moral framework. This was 1992. I didn’t know what red and blue states were. I just thought we were all God’s children. So we stepped inside.

  It was like some kind of science fiction freak show, with the young Foley family playing the part of the aliens from outer space. The choir stopped singing in mid-note. They just stopped and stared. At us. Granted, we were probably an unusual sight. My hair was much longer then, hanging way down past my shoulders. I probably had a black eye and some prominent stitches in my head. Colette’s boobs were probably halfway hanging out of her blouse, like the buxom young lady in the “Datapalooza” scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin.

  We actually felt like we had to give an explanation for why we were there. “Hi, we’re new in this area and thought we’d stop by.” At which point the service commenced, but just barely. Something was definitely not right with that scene, and that something was us.

  I’m not a fire-and-brimstone guy. I just don’t see that Jesus. I don’t feel him. I’m more of an “It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth” in the Nat King Cole version of “Oh Holy Night” type of believer. I’m a Luke 6:36 Christian believer—a “forgive and you shall be forgiven” type of guy.

  So no, I don’t go for the heavy stuff, but nonetheless I feel that I’ll be dealt with rather harshly if I don’t make the most of the gifts I’ve been given. And by “dealt with kind of harshly,” I guess I mean eternal damnation, burning in hell, all that heavy stuff I just said I didn’t go for. I really believe God loves me. I just think he expects a lot out of me. “For whom much is given, much is expected.” And I’ve been given an awful lot.

  I pass by an old Methodist church quite often (not the same one I just mentioned). And every time Mickey would see it, he’d say, “I want to go there.” Especially during the season of Lent, where a cross draped in purple cloth was placed out on the front lawn of the church. And every single day, I’d say, “We’ll go tomorrow.”