Mean Dads for a Better America

by Tom Shillue

  *

  After twenty years in the house in Dorchester on his own, my uncle Bobby passed away. He had been alone in the old house, but he had frequent visitors—his brothers and sisters, and his neighbors. He went to church a lot. I took my wife and children back to Boston for the wake and the funeral. The night we arrived, we checked into a hotel and had dinner with my parents. That’s when I told them I was working on this book.

  “What kind of book?” my dad asked.

  “Stories. Stuff from my life—it’s mostly about growing up.”

  “Sounds interesting,” he said. “Am I in it?”

  “I imagine you’re probably going to make an appearance or two,” I answered.

  “I would imagine so, yes. I can’t wait to read it.”

  Conversations with my dad have always been like this. Short and staccato. Like years ago when he was telling me to “smile at ’em,” or painfully reading the lyric sheet to Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” But now they’re a lot more comfortable. Now I can read more in between the lines. The awkward pauses are not so awkward anymore.

  My mother then told me that some of her siblings had spoken and, once again, they’d like me to give the eulogy. I said I’d be more than happy to, but when we got back to the hotel, I started fretting over it. I wondered if I should discuss Bobby’s disability—whether there was a tactful way to approach it. Should I talk about my time living with him? That he had a propensity for bullying me with the old lady? I knew I could get a laugh with the “don’t force it” story, but I wasn’t sure what the larger point was supposed to be. Like most of my stories, that one was about me, and what I was going through at the time. I needed to talk about Bobby.

  I decided I wouldn’t tell the broken-key story, I would avoid any talk of disabilities, and I would give a generic speech full of clichés about life and death. It may not be profound, but it would be safe, and at least my kids, who weren’t familiar with any of the clichés, would think I was a great philosopher.

  The next day my dad walked up to me in the lobby of the funeral home, and said, “You’re off the hook. I’m doing it.”

  I felt an immediate sense of relief. My dad was good at these things. The man shines at funerals. He’s not a natural performer like me—he’s probably only spoken in front of a crowd a handful of times, but every time there was a casket in the room. As we walked into the church, he said to me, “Do me a favor, keep an eye on me up there.”

  I took this to mean, “You, son, are the professional . . . keep an eye on me up there, let me know how I do.” When the time came, the priest called him up to the altar, and my father pulled a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket and smoothed it out on the lectern. I sat and watched him work. He spoke slowly, with long pauses, but with great command of his audience.

  He began: “A child’s problems are often a test of the parents. In that sense we are here to celebrate the loving obstinacy of John and Margaret Corrigan. It was they who came together with courage in the face of the incredibly painful realization that their youngest was, in the world’s eye, defective . . .”

  The word “defective” echoed through the church. My dad was obviously not one to shy away from the whole “disability” issue. He went on to praise Bobby’s innocence and piety, his value as a person, despite his disability. And yes, on earth, he was defective, but where he was going none of that mattered, and when we die, we could only hope to have a soul as pure as his.

  My dad touched on everything . . . the sacred, the secular; it was masterful. And concluded with this: “On the final day, the day of judgment . . . when the great and mighty and the glib and the shamed stand mute in fear, Bobby will shatter the silence with these words: ‘I always did what my mother told me.’ ”

  Eyes welled from the Shillue side of the family. Tears flowed from the Corrigan side. Handkerchiefs came out. My dad was good. He stepped down off the altar, genuflected, slipped into the pew, and stared straight ahead for the rest of the Mass.

  Afterward I was in the parking lot putting my key in the rental car ignition, and I saw him walking toward me. I was thinking of what I was going to say to him when he asked me how he had done. Should I tell him he’s a master? The best there is? That I could have never done half as well? Or should I just say “Not bad, Dad!” and leave it at that?

  When he got to me, he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the folded speech, pointed it directly at my face, and said: “Put that in your book.”

  So I did.

  I started this book with an image of my father as I saw him as a child, and I end this book with an image of my father, the same man, but as I see him now in sharper relief. The stories in between are meant to illustrate how my life is better for the great American values that I was fortunate enough to be raised with.

  Today, these values can be seen by many as out of step with the times, corny, unrealistic, and unpopular. But guess what? They work. They make you happy, they make you successful, and, most important, they make you grateful. And the gifts they bring are enormous, so it would be a mistake for me not to pass them on.

  I learned so much because of the way I was raised.

  From my dad I learned respect for family, tradition, and God. And as I watched him from my perch at my bedroom window at night, I learned to appreciate the wisdom of silence. I absorbed his respect for authority, albeit with his healthy dose of skepticism and a fierce streak of individualism. He also prepared me for The Bastards, with whom I’ve had more than a few run-ins during my adult years.

  From my mom I learned how to take care of myself, and how to be creative and find solutions to life’s problems. And I retained her love of art and entrepreneurship. And on our long drives together, a love of theology.

  From my brother and sisters, I learned more than I care to admit. They were also my first audience, as I spent my early years trying to make them laugh. I think growing up in a big family confers the kind of generous rewards that can’t be expressed in statistics. I remember when my brother spoke as my best man at my wedding, he finished by turning to me and saying, “I’ve got your back.” That’s it. We may not get together that often these days, but as siblings we always know we’ve got one another’s backs.

  From my neighborhood I learned survival skills and a healthy love of competition. Whether from the friends or the so-called bullies, they all played their part. I grew up with a little bit of rough and tumble, and a whole lot of fun and independence.

  And I learned from the institutions that helped shape me. From the Church I learned reverence and humility; from the Scouts I gained a love of the outdoors and the will to Be Prepared.

  So that when I reached those awkward teenage years, full of soul-searching and rebelliousness, I had a foundation to keep me (somewhat) grounded. And when it came time to start a family of my own, I could return to that foundation, and discover just how strong it had remained.

  I feel lucky. And grateful.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Outside of my family, I want to thank these people for helping me with this book: Kelly Van Valkenberg, Anthony Matteo, Josh Sandler, and Olivia Wingate, who believed I had a book in me and helped me to pitch it. Everyone at Dey Street, including Lynn Grady, Michael Barrs, Heidi Richter, Jeanne Reina, Nyamekye Waliyaya, Julia Meltzer, and especially my amazing editor Carrie Thornton, who made me work so hard I’m considering pitching a second book called Mean Editors for a Better America. I want to thank Suzanne Scott and Bill Shine at Fox News, and all my great colleagues at FNC, especially Greg Gutfeld and Dana Perino. Also Jim and Jeannie Gaffigan, who I’d still be working for if I didn’t have this great TV gig. And of course, Aaron Guild, who left his plow to fight in the war. (Everyone from Norwood will get that last one.)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tom Shillue is a popular host on Fox News Channel. He has appeared in his own Comedy Central Special, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Last Comic Standing, Comics Unleashed, Broad City, and
in the feature film Mystery Team. Shillue has been featured as part of the barbershop quartet on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon along with Justin Timberlake, Kevin Spacey, Steve Carrel, and Sting. In 2013 Shillue released twelve consecutive comedy albums as part of his ambitious “12 in 12” project. From 2012 to 2015, he toured the U.S.A. with friend and fellow comedian Jim Gaffigan. In 2014 he brought his solo show “Impossible” to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in 2016 he headlined at SF Sketchfest in San Francisco. He lives in New York City.

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  COPYRIGHT

  MEAN DADS FOR A BETTER AMERICA. Copyright © 2017 by Tom Shillue Productions, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Cover design and illustration by Alan Dingman

  Photographs are courtesy of the author

  ISBN 978-0-06-265617-9

  EPub Edition June 2017 ISBN 9780062656193

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  * I can’t remember the football player’s name because I didn’t have a diary yet. There’s more evidence for any young person reading this—keep a diary! And Snapchat doesn’t count.

  * We really did talk about the Russians all the time back then. There is always one overriding liberal versus conservative argument going on in our culture. Now it seems to be Global Warming, in the ’80s it was Nuclear Disarmament.

  * Instead of the phrase “yanked me out,” I should probably say “saved my life,” but back then so many kids came so close to death so often, if you gave full credit to every adult intervention, the whole neighborhood would be lifesavers.

  * The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1998 classified Mercurochrome as “not Generally Recognized as Safe” over fears of potential mercury poisoning. Well, I can tell you, if Mercurochrome caused mercury poisoning, me and all my friends would be Mad-Hatters because we almost never went a week without our moms painting an open wound with the stuff. Mercurochrome is a close cousin of thimerosal, the mercury-tinged preservative that was used in children’s vaccines until it was accused of causing autism, which I also doubt, because I’m loaded with Hg and I feel just fine.

  * There was a dogcatcher in town, a laissez-faire public servant who would show up only in grave emergencies. He would use a pole with a neck-loop at the end to harness the wild cur and drag him into the canine wagon, never to be seen again. We didn’t think much about the kind of cruelty and neglect the animal had suffered in its life. All we knew was, any dog that warranted a visit from the dogcatcher was beyond help.

  * Average price of a candy bar, U.S. 1970–1974: 10¢ for a 1.3-ounce bar; 1975–1979: 20¢, 1.2 ounce; 1980–1984: 30¢, 1.4 ounce; 1985–1989: 40¢, 1.5-ounce bar.

  * The Most Important Person was a series of animated short subject lessons for kids that appeared in between Saturday-morning cartoons. They were part of the “self-esteem” movement that was so prevalent at the time.

  * The Father McAleer Playground. But no one called it that except my dad, who refuses to abbreviate. He sends packages “via Federal Express” and orders “Big MacDonald Sandwiches.”

  * When I was a kid, the term “teenagers” roughly meant “juvenile delinquent” because when a bunch of them were together in a group, they were surely up to no good. It was only used in the context of a warning. “Don’t go into that park—it’s full of teenagers!”

  * If my mother were a career woman, she would have been as likely to be a mathematician or scientist. Her job before she married was listed as “computer.” Like the women portrayed in films like Hidden Figures, she spent her days crunching numbers as a human computer.

  * Ad Altare Dei is the Catholic merit badge. To get it you need to display knowledge and reverence for the Holy Trinity. As badges go, I’d never been more prepared for one.

  * Altar boys have two vestments, the cassock, which is the long black robe that goes on the inside, and the surplus, which is the loose-fitting white top that’s worn over it.

  * As it should have been. Think about it: you’ve got young boys wrapped in copious amounts of loose fabric walking among candles. Our vestments should have looked more like HASMAT suits.

  * The iconic picture of Farah Fawcett is the best-selling pinup poster of all time, with more than 12 million copies sold.

  * A large cluster of automobile dealerships on Route 1 is known as the Norwood “Automile,” almost all of which were owned by Ernie Boch, famous in the Boston area for his TV commercials urging people to “Come on down!”

  * CCD is the Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine, which is known as “Sunday school” to many. But there were so many Catholic kids in Norwood that the churches couldn’t handle teaching them on a busy Sunday, so they bussed all the school kids to the local parish every Wednesday afternoon for classes.

  * Yes, apparently in addition to my diary there was a Dungeons and Dragons log, which has, alas, been lost to history. I’m sure its pages were filled with more detail about Fire Giants than anyone has ever wanted to know.

  * Chuck Warner, “Throb Story,” Hyped to Death (blog), https://www.hyped2death.com/throbstory.html.