The Smashing Summer of ’78
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
Denise was a bit luckier than I was. I received my first black eye when I was only nine months old and I took a tumble down a long flight of stairs inside my walker at my Grandma Murphy’s house. Denise didn’t get hers until she was two years old. Mine was a bit bloodier and entailed stitches in my lips and missing pieces of ear. But Denise’s story is a bit more colorful. Mostly purple. It starts a little something like this: I hit my sister in the face with a baseball bat…
I was nine years old as I entered fourth grade at Fairbrook Elementary school on August 25, 1981, and at the age of five, Denise was joining me at school for the first time. We would be making the daily trudge to the Mulhern residence where the bus would pick up Denise, Kenny Carroll, and me and transport us to school, where we would each go to our separate classes. Mine was taught by Mrs. Smith, one of the oldest teachers in the school – and certainly one of the best. She could be both stern and kind and I think gained the respect of more students than any other teacher I ever had. Denise had Mrs. Ferguson, who had not been there when I was in kindergarten. 
Some may remember the title of this posting as a line from the pathological liar Tommy Flanagan, the character played by Jon Lovitz on Saturday Night Live as he referred to his wife…Morgan Fairchild. This was of course his way of untruthfully indicating that he was married to a really hot actress, who at that time in 1985 was starring in the mini-series North and South and just beginning her one year run on Falcon Crest. 
For years I was angry at Gale Storm. Well, maybe not angry with her, but I was angry at the situation. I had obtained a great signature of Charles F*rrell on a photo from My Little Margie, a popular sitcom from the early 1950’s that I came to know from reruns broadcast on the CBN network in the mid-1980’s. I had gotten this over the