Why We Suck by Denis Leary

sudden possibility of lurking danger and immediate payback for the slightest of sins, not to mention how people could just be turned into instant piles of smoking ash.
        I know that growing up in my day I had seventeen cousins here in America and two sisters and a brother and we all lived near each other and every time we went on vacation or just to the beach there were about eight or nine kids in the back of my dad's station wagon and there were no seat belts and at least four kids in the way way back and the window was always all the way down because the car had no air-conditioning and the entire car-the floor, the side panels, the dashboard, the roof-every single part of the car was made of steel and since you weren't strapped in whenever the car hit a pothole or any other bump in the road your head bounced off the roof or the side or the floor or if you sat in the way way back maybe even all three one right after another and we thought that was FUN because no matter what you did to someone else back there my father couldn't reach you unless he threw something at you from the front driver's seat and if he did that he usually hit one of the kids in the middle row instead and by the way if you fell out the back window onto the highway they didn't turn around to go back and get you or make a sudden stop they kept right on going 'cause it was just one less mouth to feed.
        I remember a Green Hornet cane that turned into a knife and a kid named Matt and another kid named Patrick and a toy Batman motorcycle that shot missiles but my mother says I never owned either one of those toys and Matt was a pain in the ass and there was never anyone in this family named Patrick except your Uncle Patrick so if there was another Patrick shouldn't she remember? No wonder they never took pictures. It was like the Mafia with children.
        And by the way the station wagon was marine green with a painted-over gas company decal on each door because my dad bought it secondhand and retooled it himself because not only was it all he could afford but they never had cars when he was growing up.
        My dad grew up with a shitload of other kids on a farm adjacent to the one my mom grew up on-real storybook romance territory. His mom died giving birth to the last kid. He only went to school until he was twelve and then he had to go to work to help feed the rest of the family, along with my Uncle Patrick. One of the kids-who would've been my Uncle Matt-died from something when he was five. No one even remembers what disease he died from-they didn't have enough time or money to find out. They pretty much just buried him and kept on milking the cows. Hey-he's lucky he got a grave. In those days you had as many kids as possible because you figured some would die, some would get killed and the rest would still be able to carry stuff. You got a cold back in those days-you could pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. My dad grew up the hard way. When he decided to come to America, he was given what all the Irish who were headed across the pond got-something called A Living Wake. That's where everyone who knew or was related to you gathered themselves down at the village pub and placed whatever money they could manage into an envelope for you-which they gave to you with their solemn goodbyes because odds were very much against them ever seeing you again. So my dad got on a big boat and two weeks later landed in New York City with thirty-seven dollars in his pocket. Almost enough to buy a cup of giant fagulated coffee and a pumpkin cream-filled muffin at Starbucks in today's terms.
        So if you wanted to complain about ANYTHING in our house-you were up shit's creek without a paddle. There wasn't a single solitary complaint you could make about your clothes or your toys or your situation that my mom and dad couldn't dial right back down to the basic facts of life-hey, yer lucky yer even here.
        
        NOT TO MENTION the house