Appendix

THROUGHOUT, DAD’S WESSELISMS PERMEATED MY life. Here are some of his go-to sayings that he repeated on many occasions, many of which he first delivered when I was a young boy:

“Don’t walk off like a goat.”

He used this one if I walked away from a job that was undone, or when I walked away from my chores, or if I left a job unfinished.

“I need to go pee on that money tree in the backyard!”

That came when he thought that we wanted him to buy things that he felt we didn’t need.

“Be the best version of yourself.”

He basically copied this from Matthew Kelly, one of the apologists for the Catholic faith.

“New math.”

He couldn’t understand how people could be spending money on iPhones, cars, etc. Coming from his post-Depression era, he didn’t understand how people bought the things that they bought. Even with me, it was his way of questioning my purchases. He would say, “Must be part of the new math?”

“You drink and I get drunk!”

Dad’s go-to line when people would be drinking at dinner, getting loud, and not making sense.

“You can’t fly with the eagles if you’re out with the turkeys all night long.”

Obviously, this was when we would come home late. My parents were great with waking us up early the next day after we were out late. There were chores to be done. And if not, they made some up. “Go polish the leaves!”

“You’re sandpapering a lion’s ass.”

This would come when he observed me working on something, either on the boat or in the garage, and I wasn’t doing it correctly. In essence, I was wasting time, which he didn’t hesitate to point out.

“Don’t be a ragamuffin.”

This was a reference, and sometimes a term of endearment, to when we were going out and we had ratty clothes on. He also would say, “Don’t be dressed up like a bag of rags.”

“Did someone drop a giffick?”

I don’t know where this one stemmed from, but it pertained to someone passing gas—when something smelled like poop. I heard Dad deliver this one long before Rodney Dangerfield’s “Somebody step on a duck?”

“Getting old is not for sissies.”

Obviously, this one isn’t unique to Dad, but later in life, he often told doctors this during his visits.

“Don’t know what you see in that roundball.”

Dad’s phrase to all of us about basketball. He never quite understood the attraction of the sport.

“There’s no sin if you get knocked down…. Sin is not to get up.”

Dad never quit. He took an old saying to the next level, bringing religion into it to make it more meaningful, which he managed to do a lot of times.

“There is a lot of sadness in the world.”

His reaction to a poor golf shot or when there was real tragedy. Nothing else needed to be said.