She wouldn’t laugh. There wasn’t a lot of laughing in this period. I’d laugh myself so I wouldn’t cry. I didn’t want to show any weakness or any fear that she was in fact going to hell.
My mom eventually got better. Years later, she still feels pain, but not in the way she did in that period of time. It’s rarely discussed in my family. But I’ve never gone back to church. I can’t support an organization that convinced my mother that she was headed for eternal torture. Like hell am I going to a church like that.
PATTI AND THE BEAR
My sister Patti always intimidated me. We didn’t seem to have anything in common. She was eight years older than me, and by far the most rebellious of my siblings.
In high school she convinced my parents to chaperone a school trip to Austria. While there, some of our distant cousins invited my parents to their horse farm. Patti showed up at the farm after having been on a drinking tour of some of Austria’s finest ale houses. She was fourteen. And plastered. During lunch, my mother noticed that Patti was acting aloof, so she tried to include her in the conversation.
“Look, Patti,” she said. “They have horses!”
Patti, with the fury of a British parliamentarian, shouted, “I hate horses!”
My mother, stunned, gave her another chance, “You do, Patti?”
Patti reiterated her position, “I really do, Mom. I hate horses!”
At this point, my parents took Patti back to the hotel and my father placed her in a cold shower with all her clothes on. Then they locked her in her room. Pretty tough stuff for a fourteen-year-old, but what else are you going to do with your drunk daughter who so adamantly dislikes horses?
Patti always resented me because as the youngest of four, I benefited from laissez-faire parenting. Compared to the treatment she received from my parents, it seemed as if I had no rules whatsoever. It was as though by the time I had come around, my parents thought, this whole parenting thing kind of does itself. On one occasion, my parents told her she couldn’t go to an overnight party at her friend’s boyfriend’s house and she started crying. She pointed at me, and shouted, “When he’s fourteen you’re gonna let him do anything he wants!” Six years old and completely confused, I sat there like collateral damage. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I could feel the hostility. She was older than me, smarter than me, and seemingly hated me. So I tried to keep my distance.
She did too. Not just from me, but from the entire family. When Patti graduated from high school, she chose the college she’d gotten into that was the farthest away—upstate New York. After college, she moved farther away—Breckenridge, Colorado. This was her final, masterful escape from the oppressive Birbiglia family. She became a ski instructor, a subtle but athletic blow-off to the parents who had put her through college as a classics major. It was during Patti’s exile in Colorado that she and I started to connect. One night, while talking with her on the phone, I discovered she had a fascination with bears.
I should point out that I’ve always had a fascination with bears. An obsession really. And Patti is a part of that.
At age eight, I started to have this recurring dream that there was a bear walking in the front door of my house. Literally opening the front door—which is the scariest part: a bear with opposable thumbs. If a bear can open a door, sky’s the limit! I don’t have a plan for that one. My plan was the door.
In the dream, I hide in the kitchen cupboard with Patti, and it’s pitch-black. Scared to death, I open the door a crack to bring in some light and look next to me. Patti is gone and she’s been replaced by the bear. And he doesn’t kill me but he gives me this coy, Jack Nicholsony look, like, “Will I kill you?” And that’s when I’d wake up. I had that dream for years.
One of the things that drew Patti to Colorado was her love of nature and animals, though not horses. Coincidentally, she started to have a recurring bear dream where a bear would approach her in the woods. I shared with her my childhood bear dream and we forged a bond.
In college I took my bear interest a step further by watching Discovery Channel documentaries about bears in all of my free time. I could watch these things endlessly. Bears are simultaneously so graceful and so strong. Bears know who they are, but they often don’t know who you are, which is why they kill you. I always feel bad for the smaller animals in these documentaries because I know more than they do about the situation. It’s like I’m at a bank heist and I’m the guy in the van watching on the monitor and the narrator says, “The arctic fox has only one known predator: the polar bear.” And I’m on my headset yelling, “Arctic fox, it’s a setup. Get outta there. Tinkles to arctic fox! Tinkles to arctic fox! Put down the salmon and walk out of the building!”
I was talking about my bear fascination with Patti in a phone conversation, and to my surprise, Patti was quick to point out some additional factoids about bears.
“Polar bears can smell their prey thirty miles away.”
“Yes, that’s true. But black bears are the most ferocious. They’re nine feet tall and their claws are as sharp as razor blades.”
“Yes, and grizzly bears weigh around 900 pounds and can run up to 40 miles per hour.”
These conversations could go for hours.
A few years ago Patti and I decided to meet the bears from our dreams in real life. We went to a place called Katmai National Park in Alaska, a remote park that can only be reached by small four-seat MacGyver-style bush planes that land on the water.
When you arrive you’re taken to what’s called “Bear Orientation.” They teach you that if you encounter a bear, you’re supposed to clap and make the bear aware of your presence. You’re supposed to shout, while clapping, “I’m right here, bear! I’m Mike and you’re a bear and we’re cool with each other.” When they told me this, I thought, Oh . . . I’m going to be murdered by a bear because that sounds like basting yourself with barbecue sauce. Like, I’m right here, bear! I’m right here, and I taste fantastic.
Later that week Patti and I went fly-fishing with a guide. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried fly-fishing, but it’s much more difficult than it looks in A River Runs Through It. There were salmon jumping out of the water—literally jumping out of the water—which is exactly what I would do if I were a fish because that seems like a great field trip. You’re in the boring water all day and then all of a sudden you’re flying in the air and you’re like, Whoa! I wanna stay here and grow legs and become a human!—which is what happened . . . over time (sorry, home-schoolers).
So, these salmon are jumping out of the water but I can’t get one with the rod because there’s this whole technique where you’re waving your arms around like an orchestra conductor. If you don’t catch one you feel like an idiot because they’re jumping in front of you and you’re conducting them but not catching them, and thinking, I should have brought a net.
I’m not catching anything and the fishing guide feels bad for me. So he catches one himself and then places the rod in my hand and shouts, “Ya got one!” And that hurt my pride, because I knew that I hadn’t.
I’m with the guide and Patti is about seventy-five yards behind us and I hear her say, “Miiike.”
Her voice had a very distinct pitch. It was the voice of a person about to be mauled.
I turn around and see an eight-foot brown bear walking toward her in the water. The whole thing was very surreal because the bear wasn’t running toward her like in a horror movie, like I will murder you! He was simply walking toward her in that laid-back bear fashion as if to say, I’m a bear, etc.
I was proud of myself because I built up the courage to say, “Guide . . . do something!” The guide snapped into action. He ran at the bear and screamed at the top of his lungs, “HEE-AHHH! HEE-AHHH!” And the bear walked away—calmly. He was like, All right . . . I’m a bear, etc.
Now, I was very relieved that my sister hadn’t been mauled, but I was a little bit mad at the guide. I thought, You didn’t tell me about the “HEE-AHHH!”
plan. You just told us to say, “I’m right here, bear!” It’s like he gave me the bad parachute. Like I jumped out of a plane and everyone’s chute went off and I had been given the multicolored gym-class-parachute. And I’m flapping this rainbow chute as I fall to my death thinking, This doesn’t do anything! Except build team skills!
Watching Patti almost get eaten by a bear changed something for me. In that moment, she was no longer the older, intimidating sibling whom I feared as a child. Nor was she the distant rebel who shunned our family. She was bear food. And so was I. It turns out we had a lot in common.
GOING PLACES
My earliest aspiration in life was to sit in the front seat. The youngest of four, I spent most of my days as a kid in the way back of my mom’s station wagon as she ferried my siblings to and from school, hit the Worcester Center Galleria Mall, and sometimes stopped by her Gloria Stevens exercise classes. In a station wagon, you’ve got “the front,” “the back,” and the “way back.” Nowadays the way back is an illegal way to transport children. You’re only allowed to transport dogs, groceries, and illegal aliens in the way back, but in the eighties they were like, “The kid’ll be fine. The way back is entirely carpeted and safe, except for the spare tire and jack.”
The way back was an anarchic wilderness of coloring books, six-month-old Christmas tree needles, and often a lone peach or strawberry, withering away toward a slow death. And since my mom has always driven with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, it was a pretty bumpy ride in the way back. But I loved it. The way back was like watching the world as a movie. The rectangular window offered a panoramic view of everything. No one ever knew what was happening in the way back. It was like a separate hotel room attached to the car. I could wave at people. Occasionally moon people. Flip them the bird when I figured out what the bird was. I remember one night on the trip home from seeing The Nutcracker in Boston, I made eye contact with a girl about my age who was also sitting in the way back. For twenty minutes on the highway, she drifted in and out of my life. Through our gaze, we shared dreams of upgrading to the back.
When my sisters Gina and Patti got their driver’s licenses, my brother Joe moved up to the front and I was upgraded to the back. The back was a comfortable chalet with some privacy still and gave me the chance to chime into conversations. I was able at least to be a backseat driver. I could say things like, “Where are we going?” and “What time is it?” When Joe got his own car, I moved up to the front seat. Wow. This was big. It felt like I was being born again at age eleven. Seeing the world in a whole new way. From the front. My mom and I would shoot the breeze. Stop in some place for a slice of pizza. Pop into CVS for some baking soda. No biggie. We’re in the front.
In seventh grade I went on the Shrewsbury Middle School’s annual trip to Washington DC. If I thought the front was eye-opening, a trip to another state with no parents was like diving into a pool full of ice water. We were chaperoned by our history teacher, Mr. Hutchinson. Every year he would cart a few busloads of students down to Washington DC by himself. For four days. And every year this trip was the same. I knew that because my sisters Gina and Patti had been on the trip and my brother Joe had too.
“Now here’s what we’re gonna do,” Mr. Hutchinson would shout in the classroom for months leading up to the trip. He repeated this over and over. “We’re gonna load up these buses at seven a.m. And if you’re not here, we leave without you.”
Oh my God. They leave without us? Then what?
“Last year Jeremy Pile missed the bus. He spent the week picking weeds in his parents’ lawn.” There was always an example of what had happened to the last person who didn’t follow these strict rules. Smart tactic.
“And then when we get to Washington DC, we meet up with Huntah.” By the way, my sister Gina is eleven years older than I am. Different tour guide? Nope. Huntah. He goes by one name. “Huntah.”
“And Hunter shows us around to all the monuments. All the museums. And we eat all our meals at Roy Rodgehs (Roy Rogers).” Mr. Hutchinson would say with a straight face to a bunch of impressionable children: “Washington DC has the best Roy Rodgehs.” I later lived in Washington DC and discovered that the DC Roy Rogers really isn’t that much different from any other Roy Rogers up and down the Jersey Turnpike, but at the time we took it as absolute fact. I actually remember repeating it to my parents: “They have the best Roy Rogers.” My parents didn’t even correct me. I think they just wanted me to stop talking.
We saw everything in Washington DC on that trip: Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, several Roy Rogers. The trip gave me a taste of a world outside of Shrewsbury.
• • •
When I finished college, I asked my mom for her car.
I had met with a comedy booker named Carl Hasselback. Carl’s office smelled like pot and he had a Rolodex of the worst gigs in America. If you’ve ever driven by a motor lodge that inexplicably has the words “Comedy Night” illuminated on a sign out front, Carl probably booked it. I could call Carl more often than other bookers because he was usually so high that he wouldn’t remember that I had called him five minutes before. He’d say, “Hey! Mike Birbaglio!” But Carl always took my calls, and I noticed that the first thing he asked was “Do you have a car?” Like he wasn’t even looking for comedians. He was looking for guys with cars, just like the booker for Fat Tuesday. The primary component of a bad comedy gig is someone showing up. The words someone and show up are key. I knew I could do this. I certainly was someone. So I needed a car. To show up.
The only person I knew with an extra car was my mom. She was retiring her green ’88 Volvo 740 station wagon. And when I say retiring, I mean the dealership offered her eight hundred dollars for it, and I begged her to just give it to me instead. This thing came loaded with the swing-down dog cage and perhaps some aging fruit in the way back, and years of wear and tear. My mom never took care of cars too well. In addition to her gas-and-brakes driving technique, she never got the oil changed. Ever. And she often drove the car on empty, which is like living in a house held up by hockey sticks. They might keep the house up for a while, but I wouldn’t have any guests over for dinner. My mom tended to put things off. I may have picked up some of that trait along the way.
I performed in St. Louis, then Cleveland, then Pittsburgh, doing unpaid guest spots at comedy clubs where they might actually hire me in the future. On the trip from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, I noticed that the orange exclamation point popped up on the dashboard. I thought, I’m sure that’ll work itself out.
I had already taken the car to the mechanic that week. After the gig in Pittsburgh, I drove home. It was about 1:00 a.m. and I couldn’t imagine myself paying thirty-nine dollars for a hotel room after making no money all week and racking up more Capital One debt in gas and tolls. So I decided to make the drive, despite the glowing orange exclamation point on my dash. I’ve heard some people put electric tape over their orange exclamation point so they don’t have to deal with it. Not me. I blocked it out in my brain. I scanned the radio for a caffeinated Eagles tune or perhaps some early Van Halen. And thirty minutes into my drive home, my mom’s Volvo wagon starts going slower and then, eventually, stops.
I’m on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It’s 2:00 a.m. My cell phone is on low battery. I have used up the battery calling people to tell them how great my life is. I’m able to get off one call to Triple A (or as my mother calls it, “A, A, A.”) before it dies. I’m sitting in my car in what is the smallest breakdown lane I’ve ever seen. It is probably about six feet wide, and trucks are whizzing past. And I’m praying that my car doesn’t get hit. A tow truck arrives around 2:30 a.m.
A large, tough gentleman who looks like he might have killed some people in his prime starts attaching my mom’s car to his tow truck. I didn’t learn his name, but let’s call him “Large.”
Just as Large is about to attach the hook to my front axle, we hear the sound of an enormous truck engine. Large and I look up
and see an eighteen-wheeler about fifty yards away heading straight toward us. It’s clear that the driver has fallen asleep, which is what I want to do, but now really isn’t the time. I need to focus on staying alive.
So I take two steps off the road and plant my body against an embankment of dirt and dry grass like a white trash snow angel. And the tow truck driver bends his upper torso over the top of my car, his legs left dangling in the turnpike, trying to clutch the underbelly of the driver-side door with his toes. The sleepy truck veers over within inches of him, the truck driver blares his horn and veers back into the turnpike, now apparently well rested. Large and I have just escaped death. It is a bonding moment.
Large starts freaking out. He’s like, “What the hell was that, man! I almost fucking died! I almost fucking died, man!” I shrug, just kind of repeating back what he said, but more quietly. “Yeah, what was that? We almost fucking died.”
We get in the tow truck and he keeps going. He’s like, “What the hell was that! We almost fucking died!” Minutes later, we’re driving to the service station and he calls his wife and he’s shouting into the phone: “I love you so bad, honey! I almost fucking died! Do you understand me!” I can faintly hear her return it back through the phone: “I love you so bad! You get home right now! Who’s with you?”
Large hangs up the phone and pulls out a cigarette. He starts smoking fiendishly. And even though I don’t smoke I ask for a cigarette. Now we’re both chain-smoking. And I’m sitting there, smoking, thinking, We almost fucking died. What the hell was that, man?
We drop the car at the service station and he leaves me at the worst motel I have ever stayed at. It’s called The Sleep Inn, which is kind of opposite of how I feel because I’m thinking, I gotta get the fuck out of here. The “all-night receptionist clearly with a shotgun” doesn’t do much to calm my nerves. I barely sleep. I just lie there, waiting for the service station next door to open up for business. The next morning, after seven hundred dollars in station wagon repairs, I drive my battered tank back to Brooklyn.
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