Gerry Dee: A Joke About His Dad and Mass

Gerry Dee (0:03)

My parents were married over 50 years. My mom passed away, my dad's still alive. 50 years! Till death do us part, and they did it. They did it, yeah. It's unbelievable. My dad was, I still see my dad, he's 92, 92 years old, and he was a police officer. And that's not fun as a kid. That is just, he just scares you. I'm still paranoid about everything. I'm hypochondriac, because my dad thought, I'm going to just scare my kids. All we learned about was serial killers. That's all. I knew every serial killer on the planet. I knew them all. He would show me pictures, and I'd have to guess, no, this was his way of teaching me, never judge a book by its cover. He goes, I'm going to show you some people here. I thought it'd be a variety of people. Okay, I'm like 10 Shows me a picture of Ted Bundy. I'm like, he looks nice. No, he's not nice. We're the worst killers in the history. Okay, then he shows me a clown. I'm like, well, he's got to be nice. No, that's John Wayne Casey. He's a clown, he killed people. Okay, this is a bad game. I don't like this game.

That's how he taught us. He put fear in us. He also did it with church. We were raised very Catholic. My parents were Catholic, which still are. I don't know how well we're doing at it, but it was just ingrained in my brother and sister and I. You gotta go to Mass. You gotta go to Mass every Sunday, or you go to hell. That was it. And you know who was in hell? John Wayne Casey.

You know, I was tied back to them. You go to hell, you're with those guys. So I'm going to Mass, then, yes, you are.

In the Catholic beliefs that I was taught, if you don't go to Mass, miss Mass, it's a mortal sin, a mortal sin. You go straight to hell if you don't ask for forgiveness. This was what we were taught by my dad. I don't know if he's right. I don't know. Didn't make a lot of sense. I said, so if I miss Mass, and I get hit by a car, and he'd finish the sentence, you're going to hell. Unless you ask for forgiveness before you die. Well, I'm hit by a car. Well, then you're going to hell, because you missed Mass. I go, and what about if Ted Bundy asks for forgiveness? He's good. He's okay. I'm like, that's not, that doesn't make sense. He goes, that's how it is. It's a mortal sin. So we'd go to Mass.

A few months ago, he's still talking about it. He goes, hey, you don't go to Mass, do you? I'm like, I don't.

He goes, your brother doesn't go either, your sister doesn't go, none of your kids go. I go, I don't go. He goes, well, I'm the only one that goes. So I'm going to heaven and you're not. He goes, how am I going to see? I said, stop going to Mass.

Come see us in hell.

Simple.

I was good at Mass. I was good at it. I was like, I knew everything. And I know there's a lot of different religious denominations and you have your services. But in the Catholic Mass, there's a lot of stuff. There's kneeling, there's standing, there's just shaking hands. You got to know it all. I knew it all. I don't know how I was so bad in school. I don't know how I memorized every prayer, every saying. I knew everything. I didn't know this one. This one was, there's a part of the Mass where nobody knows and they just go, I don't know, just do this. You can look, go to a Catholic Mass, and just see people go, okay, do-do-do-do-do. Baseball sign. I didn't know what that one was. I just kept doing it forever.

I feel like I could say Mass. I was so good by ten. I knew it so well. I knew it like the back. I knew everything. Then I went back once. It's all changed. You just screw up all the sayings, right? Sometimes you have a friend sleep over that's not Catholic. That was fun. You just play tricks on them at church. Yeah, I did that all the time. Just yell hallelujah here. You yell it loud, hallelujah. Joking. I don't say that. Watch Gerry Dee, Funny You Should Say That, only on Netflix.