I always loved those jokes about things that were “gross” and things that were “grosser than gross,” like the situation in which each of your grandparents sports an erection while you sit on their lap. After my life, though, I find more in common with the “sad” and the “sadder than sad.” Sad is sitting on your grandmother’s lap despite her death three days earlier. Sadder than sad is my entire life. Especially sad was my time in the Big Apple, and then later on in New York City.
As any celebrity knows, there is nothing worse than a hostile public. Oh, how the harsh words of New York’s schoolchildren continue to ring in my ears! ‘Ha, ha’ they would say, ‘you must be dyslexic! Trying to go to 5th Street and 72nd Avenue! It’s the other way around, retard!’ But I was just going to New Jersey. And sometimes they would scream at me ‘Ho, ho! Those are some rags! Bet they were tailored by a deaf man!’ They didn’t care that my tailor’s speech impediment was not caused by deafness. Some children would even get up on a stage, look at me and say ‘Halloa! D’ya think anybody ‘ud love a bloke li’ you!’ Afterwards they would tell me it was just a school production of Nicholas Nickelby, but I knew the truth. Don’t these children know that I am Gary Carter, former All-Star catcher for the New York Mets? I wish the Expos had never traded me. I miss some of my former teammates. Where have you gone, Hubie Brooks? I even wrote a song for Hubie. It goes like this:
Where have you gone, Hubie Brooks-io
A nation turn its lonely eyes to you…
And so on. It is sung to the tune of Edith Piaf’s “Aux Champs-Elysses.”
