A good idea in theory does not always translate into a good idea in practice. And for my family, this was the case more often than not. If someone had documented the number of family vacations taken and holidays spent together, it would resemble the trials and tribulations of Clark Griswold and his clan.

Consider one Christmas ski trip to Kitzbuhel, Austria. We landed in the late evening, promptly hopped into the van that would drive us 30-45 minutes to our hotel. Van might be a generous term. For all intents and purposes it was a bucket held together by a few screws and balanced by the grace of God on four wheels. The driver spoke no English but that was not enough to dissuade him from engaging fully in conversation as we set off from the airport. He was Austrian but his penchant for using his hands to illustrate each point made me think he was part Italian.

About 15 minutes into the drive the snow began to fall harder, the road (again, maybe too generous a descriptive) grew more narrow and my mother grew paler. She entered full panic mode when the driver opened the door with one hand and the other on the wheel. Visibility had gotten so bad that he was forced to keep his eye on the road by literally keeping his eye on the road. My mom started wondering aloud how her sister was going to get to Europe to identify the bodies and asking how she would get the bodies back to the States. Oh, and the driver kept on talking.

The first episode in the chronicles of the Dumb Family, however, may have occurred when my mom decided a visit to a family therapist was in order. I guess it was a few months after my dad died that my mom set up and appointment with the therapist. For many families, this is a good way to deal with a death and probably was a good idea at the time.

I cannot seem to recall if my mom prepped Tom and me for the visit, whether she explained why we were going or anything else. What I do know is that any plan went right out the window once I opened my mouth. We sat down in the therapist’s office, which like most resembled the living rooms they give away on The Price Is Right.

[Why I remember the office and not more important details surrounding my dad’s death escapes me]

My mom spoke first and talked about the early years of her marriage and their life in London before children arrived on the scene. She talked about what kind of father my dad was. And she talked about what being a father meant to him. Then it was Tom’s turn. He spoke fondly of his dad on the sidelines of his soccer games, how he wanted to be in advertising like his dad and what a nice family he had. To hear them talk, we were not the Griswold’s but the Brady Bunch. You could almost imagine my mom baking cookies from scratch in the kitchen.

The portrait of the all-American family shattered the moment the therapist asked me what I remembered most about life in the Hickey household.

“My mom and dad were always fighting and my dad liked to scream,” was basically my response. The ashen color my mom’s face was much like the color it took on as we drove along that road in Austria. I am sure the therapist was thinking the truth came out of the mouths of babes. The session ended shortly thereafter and we hastily returned to the car.

My mom would tell me later that she was absolutely mortified. While we, like most families, were not all flowers, sunshine and birds chirping, we also were not the dysfunctional foursome which I had described.

She got us outside and posed the obvious question, “What on earth were you talking about?”

As my mother tells me, my reply was simple. “Well, we were seeing a doctor, so I thought we had to have a problem.”

Needless to say, I did not quite grasp the whole therapy thing. And needless to say, it was the last time the Dumb Family went to therapy.