I went to a Feast of the Assumption festival last evening at OLH with our good friends, The D’s. It was really great. I had the porchetta sandwich. (That’s pronounced pore-ket to those of you outside of Philadelphia. The Italians in Philadelphia drop the last syllable on many food items: Spaghetti is spuh-get, ravioli is rav-e-ole, and prosciutto is bro-zhoot. Pax can tell us even more about that.)
In addition to the porchetta, I had a water ice and a beer. (One really great thing about Catholic gatherings — there’s often beer and wine.) I took a few pictures with my iPhone because I thought the light was getting really great with the long shadows and all.You can see the set on my Flickr page, but I thought this one was interesting.
My buddy Jim noticed this woman standing near us. And being near a church, I couldn’t help but think about my upbringing in the 60s, when we weren’t allowed to say the word “pregnant” in the house. (Proper people didn’t do that in the 60s, even though my mother was “in the family way” nearly every year.) Which brings me to the title of this article.
I Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates, You Got a Brand New Key
Summer 1969. I’m 10. And I have a few friends who are going to “public.” They learned different things than we learned at Immaculate Conception. Like sex ed. And the bad words. We didn’t have those at IC. Heck, we weren’t even allowed to say the word “pregnant” in the house. So, I thought I was going to be clever and try out something new at the dinner table.
“Paulie says that mom looks like a Volkswagen on roller skates,” I said, thinking I’d avoided the bad word. My mother was pregnant again, and pretty dang pregnant. No one had said a word about it or mentioned it before, so I took the lead.
Do you ever have one of those moments when you’ve started to fall down the hill and can anticipate that it’s not going to turn out well? Just about the time that I got the phrase “Volkswagen on roller skates” out of my mouth I got the distinct feeling that it wasn’t as funny as it was when we kids were out in the ravine playing army with dirt clods substituting for grenades. INCOMING.
My mother had a few more babies after that. I never mentioned it again.
I don’t know what comedian told the joke, but it’s advice for life: If you’re a man, never ever say anything about a woman being pregnant or suggest that she is unless you can actually see the baby coming out.
