No good deed

Former Huntington Town Councilwoman Joan Cergol continues to let it all hang out in Season 2 of Ungoverned with a story of how her carrying out a small and seemingly innocuous favor for her grandmother turned into one of the most regrettable days of her life.

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Hello and Welcome to Ungoverned, snackable stories from me, Joan Cergol, a retired town councilwoman from Huntington New York.

I’ve created this podcast to have a little fun and let it all hang out, so to speak, since for many years, my work in government and politics kept me on the straight and narrow-  well, at least for the most part.

Now that those days are behind me, I consider myself, ungoverned.

This is as good a time as any for me to share the story of how a seemingly harmless act on my part led to a catastrophic chain of events.

To be fair to myself, it happened when I was still a teenager, when it is said the human brain isn’t quite wired to full capacity.

Nonetheless, all these years later I still look back on this terrible day as a cautionary tale of how things can go very wrong when…

…you’re not thinking.

So let’s crack on, shall we?

My story begins on an idyllic spring day in 1976 

that in no way was an indicator of how it would end.

I was a month shy of sixteen years old, and definitely not sweet.

Actually, I was pretty disgruntled.

Mom was in Europe, visiting family on her annual getaway.

And due to return home that evening. 

Thereby releasing me from the painful month-long oversight of, God rest her soul, grandma Amalia.

My Italian-born grandma was summoned from Queens each year to Lord over me and my siblings during mom’s absence. 

She was a formidable woman.

To give you a sense of just how… as a newly-naturalized American citizen in 1937, 

grandma was unafraid to break into the politics of New York City public education by somehow ascending to the presidency of the Benjamin Franklin High School PTA. 

Allowing her, among other privileges, to hand out diplomas to my father’s graduating class of 1938, including, of course, to her own son.

She was determined that her son chase the American dream and become a great doctor.  

And, it’s like she just willed that into existence.

Grandma’s beginnings in America as an immigrant housewife and young mother in a Bronx tenement surely didn’t discourage her from breaking many barriers of her time, including people’s asses.

Mine especially.

Now to be charitable to grandma, there was a time, when I was small, when her visits were a thing to look forward to. 

The days she would let me rummage through her handbag to extract the bag of m&m’s she packed for me as a special treat. 

Or the weeks of clippings she saved for me from what she called “the funny papers” from the New York Daily News.  

But then…as one does, I became a teenager. 

That’s when I surmised grandma’s affection must have been conditioned on me being little and cute—because the m&m’s and funny papers stopped.

And that’s not all.

Her exclamations of “ciao bella!” were now replaced with unwelcome assessments and commentary pertaining to my half child/half woman shapeless form.  

Grandma, as ever, was ahead of her time in her fixation on physical perfection.

The still unforgettable pronouncements directed at me such as (and I quote): “Joni, you need to reducing” ..and.. you “cannota evena drinka water.”

So yeah, those were the years I wasn’t plussed to learn grandma was coming to town.

Her critical eye and words, followed by constant complaints that I wouldn’t sit with her to keep her company only did more to draw out my teen ire.

Things were not made better when Grandma invented a conspiracy theory that I planted her knitting needles on her favorite chair in such a way that when she sat down, they poked her bottom.

For the record, I did NOT plant those needles. 

In full transparency: there was part of me that wished I had.

 I can be formidable, too.

My tale of woe began the day grandma asked me to do a simple favor for her.

And it was a favor, I should, add, that I fully embraced.

She handed me a list of grocery items she needed for the evening’s meal. 

She was making a special homecoming dinner for our mom.

Could I get them for her? she asked.

My eyebrows raised in wait of a question I did not want to answer, but grandma didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell. 

Grandma was apparently in the dark that I wasn’t yet licensed to drive, although I did have a learner’s permit. 

Ok, I know it’s not the same thing…

That said, let’s just say I construed grandma’s request as permission to drive the car.

I accepted the grocery list and off I went.

You see, grandma was in the habit of making regular grocery requests to my cousins of the same age, who lived around the corner from her in Queens. 

Of course, the difference being, my cousins could walk to the stores.

Apparently grandma forgot she was in the suburbs. 

I calculated that I could get to King Kullen and back before anyone was the wiser.

It turns out, I miscalculated.

Because as well all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions…

And, unbeknownst to me, my hell started to unleash minutes after I left.

That’s when dad arrived at the house looking for mom’s roomier car that was needed to pick her up from the airport. 

Noting the car was missing, dad asked “Where’s the car?”

That’s when Grandma told him about the errand she had just sent me on.

And that’s when dad informed grandma I didn’t have a driver’s license.

Because he didn’t have time to wait for me, dad returned to the two-seater sports car he had arrived in…the one that my grandmother called his “caretto” (meaning, small cart, in Italian).  

I still don’t know how he got mom and her luggage home in that, but, I digress..

Just after dad left in a huff I returned to the house with grandma’s groceries.. 

And there she was fuming and muttering under her breath. 

I thought, no matter what I do I can’t make this woman happy. 

That’s grandma dropped the bomb.

She sent me to my room under dad’s strict instructions…and told me I was not to come out.  She wailed, “Wait until your father gets home!”

Another directive, had I heeded, would surely have prevented the calamity that followed.

I escorted myself to a room where I was harboring a stray kitten I had rescued on the way home from the bus stop.

Our dog did not much like cats, other dogs and many people, for that matter.

Thor was growing increasingly agitated by the presence of that kitten.

He spent his days pacing anxiously behind that closed door, desperately trying to inhale the kitty from under it.

Inside that room I decided I needed a plan. A nice walk and some air would help.

So I opened the window, and escaped through it. 

During my walk I came up with some excellent reasons as to why I thought it was okay to drive when I didn’t have a driver’s license.

I wanted to please grandma? It was a quick trip? I’m a great driver? I wanted mom to have the best homecoming dinner? 

It all sounded pretty good to me. 

When I crawled back into the house through the same window from which I had escaped, I didn’t find kitty there.

I was panic stricken. She must have followed me out the window!

I rushed outside to find her but instead, I found an appalling scene.

Grandma… flat on her back on the patio, and there was quite a bit of blood.

Oh my God!

I rushed to help her up and that’s when I noticed the dog cowering nearby.

Even Thor knew this was bad.

The story goes, that when Grandma saw Thor and kitty’s unfortunate meet up through the kitchen window…

the badass ran outside to break up the melee.

But instead ended up a part of it.

Despite grandma’s best efforts, things didn’t end well for poor kitty.

Dear God, how much worse could this day possibly get?

As I assessed grandma’s torn up arms, I was confident she would survive her injuries. 

But the question was, would I?

Grandma once again, ordered me to my room and this time, told me to pray to Jesu.

So I went to my room, and that’s exactly what I did.

We had a good conversation. I assured Jesu it was never my intention to create such a pile up of chaos and destruction.

And then He gently let me down that there was no coming back from this.

When my parents arrived home--- instead of welcome home hugs-- mom was met with her hysterical mother-in-law wailing about my misdeeds in half English, half Italian. 

While my father tended to his mother’s wounds my poor mother, an animal lover like me, wept as she assessed what remained of my kitten. 

Mom had made plans to drop it to someone who had agreed to take it after she got home.  

Of all the unfortunate mishaps that day– and clearly there were many -the loss of that kitten hurt the most. 

I was completely defeated, still praying, and waiting for my dad to mete out the punishment I knew I deserved.

I was ready to submit to it whatever it was.. be it lifelong house arrest, or worse yet..

…Sending me to live with grandma so she could reduce and reform me by reminding me every day what a deplorable human being I was. 

When the door to my room finally opened, to my surprise it was not dad. 

It was mom.

She sat next to me, saying nothing while I cried my eyes out.

Finally, mom asked me a simple question: 

“Are you sorry for what you did?”

Of course I was!  I’d do anything to take it all back, but couldn’t.

And she didn’t say anything more.

I didn’t understand!

But how are you going to punish me? I asked 

How? she answered. 

Is there any punishment that could be worse than the memory of this day? 

She was so wise, because, as it turns out, she was so right.

How many times in the almost half century since these events took place, have I paused to evaluate the unintended consequences of stupidity.

Too many to count. 

No punishment could have been more effective, or lasted longer, than that.

In fact, consider me still in punishment as I relate this horrific story to you.

As to grandma, while I’m sure she never forgot that day herself, she somehow managed to soften to me in later years.

When she started to see, I guess, that despite my transgressions, I seemed to be maturing into person capable of making good decisions.

Like the one I made in accepting the marriage proposal of Greg Cergol, whom at first blush she adored, renaming him “Gregorio.” 

Grandma smiled like a smitten schoolgirl whenever Gregorio came around.

But as not to let my head swell too much with her newfound approval, she’d cross herself and proclaim: “He’s too good for you!”

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t joking.

My dear Gregorio gave grandma renewed hope for my full redemption, along with the opportunity to now ask us both for favors here and there.

Such as the mother of all favors grandma asked of us when she was in her 90s, now quite frail and under the watchful eye of her son..

She was missing Italy, and asked Greg and I to spirit her away on a trip back to Rome without my father’s knowledge, who surely would have been against the idea in her condition.

A badass power move if there ever was one. 

Despite her hounding us daily to take her to Italy, my answer sadly had to be no.

Now realize here, Greg and I were turning down the chance to go on an all expenses paid trip to Italy.

So very tempting and seemingly the right thing to do to please grandma…

Exactly as I felt the day she gave me that grocery list.

But this time I had to say no.

I sometimes wonder if grandma, who was of sound mind until the end, was able to recognize that she was again asking an impossible favor to the very same girl who had to learn the hard way..

that no good deed goes unpunished.

Yeah, I doubt it.

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Thanks for listening and see you next time!