It was New Year’s Day, 1986. Penn State was in the Orange Bowl, my dad was in his Penn State shirt (a story in itself) and I was four years old.

My dad almost never drank, and there was rarely any beer in the house, but there was that day, because Penn State was doing well. It wasn’t my dad’s collegiate standard, Rolling Rock. This was beneath that. It was worse than Natty, or Keystone, or even Herman the German. It was Beer Beer — as in generic beer.

“Oh, Beer-30,” you say.

No, Generic Beer is a step below Beer-30. I’ve seen Beer-30 before and it at least comes in a colorful package.

See, back in the day, there were no store brands, or stuff like Grand Union, Sam’s Choice, or Food Club. There was one, universal store brand called “Generic,” which was situated on an isle isolated from the rest of the store that was completely devoted to this line of products. They all came in white packages with the name of the contents in black capital letters, and nothing else. There weren’t even any nutritional labels, because Congress wouldn’t pass the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act for another four years.

For example, rather than having, Ruffles, Lay’s or Troyer Farms potato chips, there was another option across the store called “ONE POUND POTATO CHIPS.” If you wanted pop, there was Coca-Cola Classic, Pepsi, RC, and “COLA.” Thus, by induction, in addition to Rolling Rock, Natty, Keystone, and Herman the German, there was also a beer called “BEER.”

“What’s that?” I ask my dad, unfamiliar with the can.

“This son, is beer,” said my dad.

“Beer?” I said quizzically. “What’s that like?”

He looks left, he looks right. Then, my dad said the magic words:

“Don’t tell your mother.”

I nodded in agreement. He handed me the can, and I took my first drink.

It tasted like homeless people boiled in dumpster swill.

I didn’t drink for nearly twenty years.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an unhealthy fascination with weapons. It’s one of the primary reasons that I’ve devoted myself so deeply to the martial arts. I cannot remember any point in my childhood when I didn’t have enough toy guns and swords to take over an imaginary Central American nation. I think it comes from my mom’s side.

I was about ten years old, standing in the toy gun isle of the Hills on 26^th street in Erie, wanting to spend my birthday money.

“That one. I want that one,” I said. I had to have it. It was bad as hell. I never saw anything like it.

“No, you can’t buy that,” said my dad. “I won’t let you get it.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because…that is an AK-47…” said my dad, stopping for a dramatic, angry finger point. “…this is made by the Soviets, and used by the Iraqis. You want to get this one instead…” said my dad, pulling a different toy gun from the rack.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“That’s an UZI. It’s made by the Israelis.”

“Who are they?” I ask.

“They’re our friends,” said my dad.

You, the reader are likely saying “So what?” but Bill, my anti-Zionist communist gun-nut friend, thinks this is the funniest story ever.

My earliest thoughts on religion were always confusion. I attribute this to my dad, who taught me faith and doubt simultaneously in the same lesson. I was about four, and standing in our kitchen when my dad taught me to pray.

“Before we pray, we always make the sign of the cross, like this…” he tells me, and demonstrates, and then adds “…unless you live in the Brave New World, then you make the sign of the T, like this…” which he also demonstrates.

“The brave, new world?” I ask. “What’s that?”

My dad then explained every aspect of that book to me, in lurid detail. I was four. Because of this, I can’t remember the entire ensuing diatribe, just a few points that stuck with me.

“It was a book written by an Englishman…” said my dad.

“Like Jack the Giant-Killer?” I said.

“Yes! Exactly! Except his name was Aldous Huxley. In his book, people didn’t worship God, they worshiped Henry Ford, and the measured years in A.F. — After Ford, and not A.D., like we do.”

“Why did they worship Henry Ford?” I asked. “Who’s Henry Ford?”

“Why, he invented the assembly line! He’s the reason that we have all the things that we do!” Realizing that I was only four, he explained to me how consumer goods used to be individually manufactured in toto in a slow and inefficient process by skilled craftsman, and Ford came up with the notion of having legions of unskilled laborers working specializing on one small task of a larger project, lowering the cost of production, and therefore the cost of the overall product such that they could be afforded by all. I was four.

“Henry Ford came up with this idea to build cars. That’s why they make Ford cars, like your uncle has. The Model T was the first car to be built this way, so they make the sign of the T,” said my dad.

There was a minute of pure silence.

“So why don’t we do that?” I ask.

“Because, it was just a book, and we don’t follow that,” said my dad.

“What do we follow?” I ask.

“We follow a different book, called The Bible.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because,” said my dad. “We’re Catholics.”

Fast-forward twenty-three years. My dad has passed on, and I’m a grown man who decided to lift his ten-year moratorium on literature to research dystopias for my book. I checked Brave New World from the library, and as I read it, I thought to myself: “This all seems eerily familiar.”

Then, from the deep recesses of my brain, this story emerged, and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.