Growing Up in the 80s Part 2: Destro’s Birth

By Destro Designs–Viper Den Studios

I’ve had many nicknames throughout my life, and well into my twenties, one of them was “Jesus.” I’ll tell you why.

My parents were teenagers when I was born, so they both still lived with their parents. My mom lived in an upper-middle-class home up on the hill, while my dad lived in a flat down in the ’Burgh. They were both so young, and my mom’s parents were pretty strict, so they didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant. However, legend has it that my dad’s mom somehow knew intuitively.

My dad had a garage out back where he and his friends used to work on cars. He and my grandfather actually had a full-service garage about a mile away, but my dad worked on his own car in this garage.

One night, my mom went into labor and didn’t know what to do.

She snuck out of the house and drove down to the one place where she knew my dad would be—the garage.

My mom was obviously in pain. She lay down on a four-foot-long van seat that had been removed from a vehicle and left in the garage as a place to sit. It became her only place of respite while she panicked.

My dad, completely clueless about what to do, called the hospital. They sent an ambulance, and, of course, a police cruiser heard the call and showed up as well.

In walked two rookie cops who had received some form of emergency-delivery training. One of them tried to calm my mom down, but I had apparently been in a hurry since minute one. There I was, already trying to bust out of the womb.

The officer did what he had been trained to do and successfully delivered me just as the ambulance was pulling up. The EMTs wrapped me in a blanket, placed my mom in the back of the ambulance, and rushed us off to St. Mary’s Hospital.

That rookie officer would eventually become the chief of police.

When he retired, the local newspaper ran a front-page article about him. The first question they asked was, “In all your time on the force, do you have one memory that stands out the most?”

Without spending a single second thinking about it, he replied, “Oh, without a doubt. In 1979, I was a rookie, and I delivered a baby in a garage. I’ve never forgotten that.”

That baby was me.

Now, you may be wondering where the nickname came from.

It was a tight-knit community back then, so later that night, the police officers came to the hospital to check on everyone. My dad and his friends were there drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, celebrating, laughing, and joking around.

One of my dad’s friends said, “It’s like the baby Jesus story in the manger—two people looking for a place to rest who wound up having a kid.”

That story was told at endless barbecues and cookouts. When I was old enough, I told my friends, and the nickname never died.

Something like this probably wouldn’t happen today. There are so many programs for prenatal care and other forms of support that my mom hopefully wouldn’t have felt so alone while carrying me for those nine months.

I’ve always thanked her. It sounds like she carried quite a burden, and I’m grateful that she did what she had to do to bring me into this world and raise me well.

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me.