Geno’s Wrong (bang a gong)

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I’ve heard tell that a baby’s first post-partum sensation is a visceral experience of himself and his mother as One. Thus, being too new in Life to yet separate himself from the outside world, little baby Geno mentally concludes mommy and he are the exact same entity. And when the light bulb finally does go off in the infant’s bald little noggin a few months down the lifeline and he realizes he’s been maternally duped by Nature, the very first ‘Separation Anxiety’ is then experienced and all future disappointments in his ensuing  mortal journey can be traced back to that very instant. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. Either that or I dreamt it in one of my other, more enlightened lives when I wasn’t so monetarily attached to my livlihood.

I’ve also read somewhere that when one person moves to thumb down, and snap the mutual wishbone, ending a personal or business relationship abruptly, that the mental decision was made long before the actual ax hit the proverbial turkey’s neck; that the severing party (axer) grieving period had already begun long before fatal action was actually taken and thus, comes off as being the more ‘heartless’ of the separated duo. The turkey (axee), on the other hand, is cast immediately into a state of shock and is forced to run around ‘headless’ and very quickly come to terms with his own extremely short future as a team member in this world.  Somewhere between these first two paragraphs lies my point (allow me a few moments to dig it out as I simultaneously fret over a handful of my difficult Listings with a combined market time of almost 3 years) but I can tell you right now; headless, heartless, whatever…I’d rather be the axer than the axee.

I thought about this quite a bit as I escaped the silent treatment market torture in Chicago and flew home to visit with my 80 year old parents over Easter weekend. As I walked through their front door I was instantly greeted by a lifetime of childhood reminders, familiar tastes and nearly forgotten episodes. I sat there for hours keeping company with the two people I’ve known longer than any two souls on this earth, wondering where all the time went. I told them I felt so different lately, with barely a speck of child left in my psyche. They told me I’m exactly the same, “minus the hair loss, of course.”

“You’re just getting old, that’s all,”  my father said. “Look at me. I’m shrinking.”

I had been. I tried to match the face with the man who taught me to throw a baseball and swing a golf club but no results were immediately found. Ironically, my parents’ house is full of framed images of people and events that no longer look familiar.

I barely resemble the portraits on the walls; a series of thickly brushed oils on canvas my mother had me pose for on those long past Sunday afternoons, many years ago. It was her Artist period and I, being her favorite willing subject, was always quick to oblige. After all, I think I used to think she was me. I turned to my dad sitting in his arm chair and caught a glimpse of myself a few, short decades from now, when I am no longer the apple, but the tree. We share many of the same physical features; to the point that the very oldest of my remaining relatives often times confused me with him as a younger man, during similar visits.

“So you’re back from the Korean War, Genie?” I was asked once by a 103 year old great aunt who refused to wear her hearing aids for vanity purposes. I was 22 and the year was 1978.

“Yeah,” I replied, speaking for the old man back home. “It sucked.”

“That’s a nice.”

****************

I sat in the living room, staring at my own framed images, mentally calculating the miles and re-mapping all those thousands of routes that landed me on that plaid, woven davenport in Northeast Philadelphia at that very moment. “How’s business?” my Dad asked. But before I could answer untruthfully he asked me if I wanted to finish a crossword puzzle he was stuck on, motioning his clipboard with a hundred other unfinished cut out puzzles from the Philadlphia Inquirer brain teaser section, my way.  And then if  ‘I wanted a soda from the fridge?’  And if  ‘I was hungry?’  My mother immediately jumped up to make me a sandwich although we had finished a lunch of sandwiches only an hour or two before.

“Geno’s hungry, Mitz,” he declared, trying to figure out a four letter name for a band member of U2, still clutching on to the proffered grid of letters and blank boxes, not quite ready to throw in the towel.

“I know. I’m making him a sandwich,” answered my mom, Mitzi. She was perhaps, a little snippy but that’s how they get sometimes. I didn’t even attempt to refuse or accept. I know better than to agree or disagree with either of them under that roof.  My parents have been married for 63 years and are going to do their own thing whether I want another sandwich or not.

“Bono,” I tell my dad.

“Bono?”

“Yeah, Bono.” he’s a singer for U2.

My father studies his puzzle, mouthing words down and across silently.  “Bono?” he asks again.

“Yeah, the singer for U2,” say I.  He is squinting at the clipboard, now.

“I think it starts with an E. Not a B,” he answers.

My mother brings in a ham sandwich on a kaiser roll from the kitchen. It has mayo, mustard and a pickle on it. Onion, too. I rarely eat any of those things but I dare not say a word for fear of offending her.  “Diet Coke?” she asks.

“No mom…you know what Paris Hilton says about Diet Coke, don’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t like her.” declares Mitzi.

“What?” my dad pipes in, apparently with a different opinion of the media icon.

“Only fat people drink Diet Coke,” I say.

“Fat people?”

“Yeah, it’s a joke I think.” I say,  now wondering myself if it’s even funny. They don’t get it and now, I don’t get it either. My wife Mona, is taking a nap upstairs, belly full with as many sandwiches as she’s probably eaten in a month. The volume is turned down on the television and closed captions are streaming across the top third of the screen, covering  the faces of everyone on the Fox News Network. My parents read, watch and comment unfavorably whenever someone bashes Hillary or Obama and hiss in unison when anything positive is said about Bush or the War. I ask them why they even watch Fox at all if they are Democrats but they don’t really get the question. I guess I don’t really get it either in this particular election year. Perhaps they just have trouble working the remote and are afraid to mess with the Dish. There are Post-it notes taped to everything electronic in the house and most things static, as well.

And despite what I have just witnessed, I feel like I too, am losing market share quickly in this wildly out of control time warp where one second I’m a kid and the next, I’m in my 50s selling real estate in a down market.  In 10 minutes, I’ll be my father looking for any small victory I can muster. I sometimes feel as if I’m lagging behind all the youth and technology in my chosen industry of real estate. I have to read something three times before it makes sense, lately. I can only buy my way out of so much of it before I get lapped by the genius youth who have only known an iPhone/Facebook/Starbucks existence on this planet. I am now the age my parents were a mere 28 years ago. My goodness, it was just the other day that I graduated college and…

“Edge.” my dad declares.  “The band member for YouTube is Edge.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot about him,” I say. “Although I’m pretty sure he’s called The Edge….” but before I could finish my sentence…

“Hey Mitz. Geno’s was wrong! The answer was Edge. E.D.G.E.” My dad was beaming, mouthing the word across and down, completing his task for the day.

“Geno was wrong. Geno was wrong,” I hear Mona sing-songing from the upstairs guest room, laughing from behind the half opened door.

For a second I longed for those good old days when Maxwell House was my beverage of choice, my only phone was green and attached to a wall in my kitchen, and I was right most, if not all, of the time.  And his name is The Edge, goddammit. I make eye contact with my mother sitting next to me on the davenport now.  I dig down deeper, trying to recall a glimpse of that fabled ‘separated’ moment more than a half a century ago….but nothing. No results found.

“Hey Mom,” I say in a near whisper, at last feeling like my old self for the first time in days, “Make Mona a sandwich and take it upstairs to her…. with a Diet Coke…”