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So-is there a difference between the terrible cancer and the horrible cancer?

(stop making fun of me) Denis.

(still making fun) Ma.

What are you calling for?

I'm just wondering-when we were kids-how often you and Dad used to hit us.

(suspicious) Why?

I was just curious.

Well-your father one time when you kids were small Johnny forged his name on some paper at school and the nuns called up about it and I told Daddy that you know he had to set an example with all these kids because this could be the beginning of some bad behavior here so we got all you kids gathered up in the hallway and he took Johnny into the bathroom and I think he used his belt but anyways he gave him a good couple of whacks in the bathroom with the door closed and I think the message got across and that was that.

I remember that.

You do? Well then I guess it did what it was supposed to do. Kids are the house that they come out of Denis-whatever goes on inside that house that's the way the kids're going to behave when they go out into the world.

Dad used his belt-what would you use when you hit us?

Whatever I had in my hand. I dunno. I really had to hit you and Betsy. The two of you-you two were always getting into some kind of cadology.

Okay.

Okay?

Okay, Ma.

That's it?

Yup.

You know Brian Leary hasn't had a cigarette in almost fifteen years now?

I know.

He rides bikes all the time in races.

I know.

Okay then, honey-thanks for calling.

Okay, Ma.

Bye.

CLICK.

(Let me just take a moment here to note: the word "cadology" was one my mother threw around the house on a daily basis. Cut the cadology, knock it off with the cadology, yer not kidding anyone with that load of cadology-these were just a few of the variations we heard throughout our lives. We just assumed it was an Irish word. My parents had learned Gaelic when they were in school and my father was very fond of the word "ammodon"-our spelling-which as far as we could tell was Irish for asshole or jackass because everyone he referred to as an ammodon was, in fact, an asshole or a jackass or a clear combination of both. Cadology sounded like it was connected to science and maybe a behavioral science but that would seem out of character for my mom. After this conversation with her I looked it up in an online dictionary. Nothing. So I tried the big giant hulking eight-pound Webster's dictionary I keep at my feet when I'm writing. Nothing. Now I am beginning to believe my mother just made the word up-a pleasant and lilting term she decided to toss around perhaps just as a way to confuse us. I check Merriam Webster Online. Nothing. I Google the Google Thesaurus. Type in "nonsense." Cadology does not come up. I change the spelling-codology. Merriam Webster Online-nada. Big Hulking Eight-Pound Webster? Nope. My Irish-English Dictionary? Not a chance. English-Irish? Forget it. Irish-English and English-Irish Online? Not there. I even went to Encyclopaedia Britannica-which is a goddam encyclopedia from fucking BRITAIN-where they pretty much invented words. No codology. Finally I call my sister Ann Marie and get her husband Neil-who I will speak further of much further on-and he says that my Ann told his Ann that I'm working on the book but that reminds him about my cousin Ann who we have to call Nancy because there are too many Anns in the family on this side of the Atlantic but anyways Nancy whose Ann ran into my cousin Betty Ann who was talking to one of my Aunt Anns in Ireland and she had just used the term "codology" in reference to her daughter Ann's baby Mary Ann and that's the point at which my head almost exploded. So Neil went to a website called World Wide Words while he was telling me this because he said whenever my mother uses a word that he doesn't know he skips all the normal sources and goes right to this place and sure enough-there it was:

Codology.

H. V. Morton in 1930 wrote that codology was "a science unknown to us in England which involved individuals or entire villages performing a joke, hoax or parody at the expense of an Englishman. Derives from the term 'cod'