Sleepwalk With Me_ And Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia [22]
That was the entire conversation.
That was it.
In the end, I figured out how to get rid of their porn virus. I Googled “porn” and fortunately there were a lot of results, like 60 million. Then I Googled “porn virus” and there were some answers and, finally, an antidote. But my parents still insisted on putting the computer in the corner with the screen facing the wall like the computer had done something wrong. And we’ve never spoken of it since.
My dad is a neurologist, or a “head doctor” as I always explained to people. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what that even meant. I thought it meant if you got a scratch on your head, he patched you up. I had no understanding of the implications of a brain injury or degenerative brain diseases or anything. I just thought it was cool he sometimes saw college football players and even some guys who went to the NFL. Once he was quoted in Sports Illustrated in an article about Holy Cross star football player Gill Fenerty.
The article was called “Canada’s Hot Southerner,” and here’s the quote: “A few months later Fenerty underwent more tests. ‘We did the arteriograms, CAT scans and myelograms again. They were all normal,’ says neurologist Vincent Birbiglia. ‘The significance was that there was no underlying structural or vascular abnormality that would be likely to rupture again. I didn’t think Gill was at any greater risk of having this occur than any other player.’”
Which begs the question When did Sports Illustrated get so sciencey? Nowadays if you read an article about a football player, they write, “And his brain got smashed around like a sponge, you know, like the kind you use to wash your truck.” And then there’s a picture of a truck.
All I knew was that Vince carried his case of medical tools out of the house every morning and returned home around seven for some quiet time. In third grade we had an extracurricular event every Sunday called “science club.” That’s just what I needed in my life. More science. Every week a different parent would come to one of the classrooms at St. Mary’s School and talk about how their job related to science and teach some sort of lesson. We had people who worked in computers and physical therapy.
Toward the end of the series my dad agreed to come in and speak. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was he going to set up a chair in the corner of the classroom, read a war novel, and scowl? Yell about how people had taken certain sections of the newspaper? I was extremely nervous. It was the closest I had come to public speaking myself. I told my friends it would be pretty boring and uneventful. I was managing expectations.
My dad showed up with the mysterious case of tools I had seen in his car for all those years. He took them out and put them on the teacher’s desk in the front of the room. He had the kids gather around and he went one by one through all of them and described what each of them did. He seemed very comfortable. He even pulled out some charts of the body and the brain and had all kinds of explanations that were confusing and impressive. At the end of his speech he took questions and it was clear that he knew exactly what he was doing. It was amazing. I had the smartest dad. I couldn’t believe how smart he was. And I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t told me any of this stuff sooner.
LIKE HELL
One thing about my mom is that she makes up sayings or at least uses phrases that people no longer use. I realized this when I entered the adult world and I would repeat expressions that my mom uses and people were like, “What are you talking about?” When I was a kid and I wasn’t allowed to do something, my mom would say, “Like fun are you doing that.” Which was really confusing because it seemed like she was encouraging me. She’d say, “Like fun are you going to the mall!” I’d be like, “Yeah! Like fun—pizza, buddies, arcade games!” At a certain point, I figured out that “like fun”