Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,2

half listened to—and while I loved going along, I never paid a bit of attention to the game. Who could, when there was so much else going on? When you could analyze the cheerleaders and try to determine which was the one the rest of them didn’t like? When the guy three rows ahead of you with the huge pink face got drunker and drunker on the ice-cold beers the vendor kept selling him, and his wife silently planned her escape? When you were scanning the audience for someone else who was looking at the world the same way you were, who also called the crowd at a football game an “audience”? Life was unfolding all around—who cared which team got the most points?

My family is also Catholic, which meant that we showed up at 11:00 Mass every Sunday, with breakfast at the IHOP after. Catholicism is supposed to contain and explain all the mysteries of an infinite universe, but you’re not supposed to ask questions. You’re supposed to sing along with the hymns, but not too loudly. You’re supposed to sit—and stand, and kneel, and genuflect—quietly in church, and if that’s hard for you to do, you’re supposed to give it as an offering to Our Lord Jesus Christ. (Affer it up t’Are Lard, Mom would whisper to us; you’re evidently also supposed to know what that means.) You’re expected to worship an invisible, unknowable being who made the whole world in six days and then rested for one, who sent his only son to die on a cross because of what you did or might someday do or might someday think about doing, all so that someday you can go live on a cloud with them and all your dead relatives and favorite celebrities for an infinite number of forevers. But you’re not supposed to be weird about it. When your main objective is to be a good kid, Catholicism makes everything extremely complicated.

Growing up, my brothers stood as two ball-playing, Catholic-etiquette-understanding examples of what boys were supposed to be. They were effortlessly athletic and personable, smart and charismatic. They were cool. Dan was in a Catholic high school in Midtown St. Louis that had a military option, which he chose voluntarily, in classic oldest-child fashion. Steve went to a different one in the suburbs with a good football program. Dan could do all kinds of drills with his rifle; he could tap me on the shoulders with the Wiffle-ball bat from the garage and make me a knight like he saw in Camelot. Steve could do all the Muppets’ voices and throw a tennis ball so high in the air it became a tiny speck and then I couldn’t even see it anymore. And I begged them to do it all again and again. It was the best show in town.

Where they could wrestle or race each other and be more or less evenly matched, either one of them could demolish me so easily there was no point in my even trying. When they tossed a baseball at each other, it would make that satisfying, forceful little pop when it would hit the other’s glove; my throws would make a sad little arc ending halfway to my intended target, an average of thirty degrees to the left. They knew how to talk to and win over kids their age; I gave up on my peers when I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to discuss Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

They were also skilled at the art of being good older brothers. It’s Steve who taught me how to read, when he was ten and I was two. We watched Sesame Street together, and after each episode he’d make flash cards to reinforce the lessons of the day. Because it meant more time together, I’d go over them again and again until I was reading whole sentences. I became a local celebrity: The Kid Who Can Read. I’d read the slogan of the local dry cleaner out loud—“If we can’t clean it, it can’t be cleaned”—and follow along with Father Shea from the missalette during Mass. If I didn’t understand what I was saying, I knew how people were reacting. They noticed me, and I liked being noticed. So I kept doing it, and by the time I was in first grade, I was reading way beyond my grade level. I promise I’m not bragging here; the reason two-year-olds tend not to read is that people tend not to teach