My father Thomas Condon, Jr. is 81 years old. PJ and I have referred to him as the real-life Forrest Gump.

Yes, he has the gift of gab like Forrest, but it’s the way he has always lived his life that reminds us of Gump – floating along like a feather in the wind.

Pa, as I call him, didn’t speak much when I was growing up. He was the quiet Irish guy in my mother’s loud Italian family. My friends said they never heard him talk.

I would get a peek at his more boisterous side when my mother’s family from Brooklyn came to our house and he would have a couple (or a lot) of drinks. His voice would go up a few octaves and he’d laugh like a hyena. But for the most part, he was a quiet guy.

Something happened after Pa retired. The floodgates opened and he began talking nonstop. Now, family dinners are often interjected with a funny, often incredible story that I’ve never heard before. I’ll say, “How have you never told us this?” He just shrugs because to him it’s no big deal, it’s just his life.

So I’ve decided to document his stories here. I’m not even going to try to put them in order, I’ll just tell them how I remember them or when he hits me with a new one.

Today’s story is one I’d never heard until PJ came home from their house last week and told me. I had Pa repeat it back to me yesterday.

The Unholy Hotdog

Tommy Condon was walking home from Catholic school one Friday afternoon. There was a tempting aroma of hotdogs wafting through the Astoria, Queens air.

Up ahead, he saw a hotdog cart like a mirage in the desert – after all, he was hungry! So Tommy stopped and got himself a hotdog with mustard and sauerkraut. He also got an orange soda because he always had to have an orange soda with his hotdogs.

As Tommy stood there, enjoying that first delectable bite, his friends walked by and said, “Tommy, what are you doing? It’s 2nd Friday!”

(The second Friday of Lent is a day of mandatory abstinence from meat for Catholics aged 14 and older.)

Tommy forgot he wasn’t supposed to eat meat because he went to mass at 8:00am, then a full day of school, then basketball practice. He was hungry after such a long day and didn’t remember that eating that hotdog would cost an eternity in purgatory.

I asked if he threw the hotdog away in fear as soon as his friends reminded him.

Nope, he enjoyed the whole thing and went to confession the next morning. He was sure to go to the priest with the longest line because that was the one who assigned the least repentance.

The end.