Heffernan Family Events - Vol. 1

The Heffernan Family is defined by its history together and apart. Well-known to us, but maybe not to everyone are the family members and all those other people, places, and events that serve to make up our own unique family identity. This post if an effort to detail the people and events that make us the Royal Heffernans.

Dad teaches us all to curse through do-it-yourself home repair jobs

We all remember those wonderful weekends when, at mom’s request, dad would try and fix something around the house. Almost never did things go as planned, and most of the time they went horribly wrong. It was during those times that Heffernan children learned the fine art of cursing.
Mom would usually require at least one of us kids to help out dad, and usually we were eager to help. The prospect of putting in a new sink, or building a deck, or rewiring an outlet, all for the benefit of house, home, and family, were attractive. However, the attraction was quickly lost when we heard the first grumblings of dad. A few deep breaths, a muttered word or two, and then… a tirade at which Ralphie himself would have covered his ears.
Those were usually the points when any “extra” help vanished. Obviously Colin was long gone, and unless you were directly involved, you left as well. Sometimes mom would make us go back, and when we objected, she’d just say “Cover your ears, he needs help.” Help he did need, but usually it was help from himself. In the end dad usually made things work. He built two decks, redid the majority of cable and phone lines in Copperglow, did a significant bit of plumbing in his time, and even managed to chop up the oak tree without dying (though it was touch and go there for the two guys holding the ladder).
Dad always kept up a steady string of “colorful” language once the first problem was found in any project. And it was usually at that point that mistakes were made: making the seal too tight, hitting every finger on his left hand with the hammer, cutting the wire a hair too short, and countless runs to the hardware store for supplies ex post facto. It didn’t help that the hardware stores never had the necessary supplies, so a second trip was required – as it was required for God to damn the required item not in stock, the store to which we went to obtain the item, anyone in any way responsible for the store not having the item, and dad himself for needing the item in the first place.
Dad, of course, never forgot to include himself in his tirades. In that he taught his children humility. “Blame the idiot holding the hammer,” I heard him say once after he couldn’t hammer a nail in straight. He always remembered to include himself when telling God that something (or someone) needed damning. I learned a valuable lesson from him: you can yell and scream and curse at people and inanimate objects all you want, but you have to include yourself, too.
Dad is the reason why Heffernan’s love doing home projects. If you happened to marry a Heffernan male, dad is also the reason we’re so creative in our solutions when something goes wrong. Dad is also the reason why when a mistake comes up, you can tell the severity of the problem by the expression. The following is the severity level by expression, per Dad:

Crap – minor problem, easily solved with a little extra time
Damn – unforeseen problem that can be easily solved with extra time and supplies
God damnit – any problem caused due to your own mistake
Shit – major problem, only moments before catastrophic failure of some jerry-rigged contraption
Fuck – major setback; the plan has gone terribly wrong due to poor planning

That being said, dad’s desire to always do things himself (attributable to lack of money and/or lack of common sense) made do-it-yourself men out of all of his sons. We’ve all learned valuable lessons of what and what not to do for home repair jobs. We also learned the fact that a little extra money spent up front, yields large dividends in the end. And lastly, we learned that do-it-yourself projects require planning, organization, and a steady stream of cursing that provides valuable information to our spouses and children about the current status of the project.