{"id":1618,"date":"2013-08-26T03:43:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T01:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1618"},"modified":"2013-09-01T12:36:20","modified_gmt":"2013-09-01T10:36:20","slug":"talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1618","title":{"rendered":"Talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BusyBodies<\/a>Whenever you visit your hometown there are bound to be places which evoke a strong memory or a blazing sense of nostalgia. There have been so many for me on this trip to Langhorne, Pennsylvania. There are malls, schools, parks, people, and streets.<\/p>\n

Today, driving down a small road in Feasterville, I fell into a memory so vivid and realistic that it might qualify as hallucination.<\/p>\n

It was October 16th<\/sup>, 1986, and my dad and I were heading home from a Thursday evening football practice. His Bonneville was the same as every time we sat in it: smoky, monotone sports talk on the radio, avid conversation about our next meal. I bet pork chops, he bet spaghetti. I had just turned 12-years-old and was cultivating a peach fuzz mustache that had sprouted a few weeks earlier. Life was pretty solid.<\/p>\n

We were moseying along when we became aware of a beautiful woman in a miniskirt so short it was more of a fanny pack. We had never discussed women before, and my dad shot me a couple looks which unsettled me. The result was a heavy fog of discomfort settling in the Bonneville. When my dad turned the radio down I knew I was in trouble.<\/p>\n

Dad: \u00a0\u201cAhem\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: \u201cWhy did you turn off the radio?\u201d I began searching for an open window I could squeeze through or a heavy stick I could knock myself out with. I couldn\u2019t help thinking that this was the price to pay for growing a mustache.<\/p>\n

Dad: \u201cListen, don\u2019t screw anyone til you\u2019re 18 or 19 and when you do, wear a rubber. Got it?\u201d<\/p>\n

I nodded.<\/p>\n

Done. Radio back on. I breathed again, it was over. My relief was made sweeter by pork chops for dinner.<\/p>\n

There had been a rash of talks going around our development that fall. Like the<\/i> talk. We were all about 12-years-old, so it was that time. Michael had gotten his on a trip to the pumpkin patch. Scott had gotten his at a Flyer\u2019s game. Eddie had gotten his while eating cheeseburgers and Mac and Cheese. That one was like a professional hit: give him his favorite meal and then talk to him about sex.<\/p>\n

We had even gotten a sex talk at school. Well, sort of. Father Talen, an 897-year-old priest who spoke Latin to us in the hallway, spoke in extraordinarily vague terms about our \u2018one eyed monster\u2019 and being led astray by \u2018the beast within.\u2019 Though he seemed satisfied with the success of his talk, we were left wondering why an ancient priest would talk to us about tapeworms and diarrhea.<\/p>\n

What was most amazing about this rash of talks was their absolute uselessness. I had a higher probability of needing instruction on how to fight of a deranged wildebeest with an accordion than a sex talk. Still, my dad, usually a loquacious man, went against his chatty nature on this one topic and though he created me and paid for my college education I have never been more thankful of anything he\u2019s ever done for me.<\/p>\n

In any event, the talk had come and I had survived it; I was now a man, a man with a blooming mustache. Life was good.<\/p>\n

My arrogance was about to be punished.<\/p>\n

A few days later I was coming home with my mom from the store. Her Subaru was in its usual condition: packed with groceries, Philadelphia Eagles glove hanging from the rear view mirror, Irv Homer groaning about something on the radio. I was stroking my mustache when my mom turned down the radio. I looked at her and thought: no, no, this already happened! What are you doing! But before I could say a word, she said the single worst sentence in the history of mother \u2013 son conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know you know about masturbation.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would love to report my response, but I have no recollection as I was trying to self immolate by applying the cigarette lighter to my Jams. I do remember her follow-up sentence, which is the second worst sentence in history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was watching Oprah.\u201d Oprah. Arch nemesis.<\/p>\n

Things get vague here, but I did catch the gist while trying to stuff zucchini into my ears while praying for a bolt of lightning to mercifully end my suffering. It seems that Oprah had a show in which mothers talked about their sons\u2019 tragic deaths due to auto-erotic asphyxiation.<\/p>\n

And she didn\u2019t want me to do that. And that was the talk I got that Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

So today, as I drove down this little road in a Pennsylvania town in grew up in, my nostalgia attic was knocked loose and I was forced to remember the sex talk from my dad, the \u2018one eyed monster\u2019 talk from a thousand-year old priest, and the \u2018don\u2019t strangle yourself while you jerk off\u2019 talk from my mom.<\/p>\n

Translation: I need to come back to Prague. Now!<\/p>\n

Your most awkward talk? \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever you visit your hometown there are bound to be places which evoke a strong memory or a blazing sense of nostalgia. There have been so many for me on this trip to Langhorne, Pennsylvania. There are malls, schools, parks, people, and streets. Today, driving down a small road in Feasterville, I fell into a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1EvEu-talks","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1628,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions\/1628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}