A Quote by Rudy Ruettiger
When I was growing up, my father would gather all of his children, seven brothers and seven sisters, around the television set and we would religiously watch every time Notre Dame played.
Related Quotes
When I was growing up we didn't have cable. All that came on Saturday morning was Notre Dame football, and I was there every time to watch it.
To my father, Notre Dame represented the underdogs of the world, the Italians, and the Polish people. I told him that one day I would play football for Notre Dame and worked hard to make that dream come true.
I have seven brothers and sisters, and I'm the only one who looks white because my mother has had children by all black men, and then my father has children with other women as well.
So the Great Santini was how he liked being referred to by his children. He would line up his seven children, and there was this ritual we'd go through. And he would say, who's the greatest of them all? And we - the seven - would say, you are, oh, Great Santini. And he would say, who knows all, hears all and sees all? You do, oh, Great Santini. So this was the ridiculous way I was raised.
Growing up under the heavy hand of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, it was drummed into me that attending weekly mass was not an option. It was a must to avoid eternal damnation, which was not a prospect filled with many positives. Hell fire was perpetual, and no parole would be offered.
Now, everybody knows the basic erogenous zones. You got one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. ... OK, now most guys will hit one, two, three and then go to seven and set up camp. ... You want to hit 'em all and you wanna mix 'em up. You gotta keep 'em on their toes. ... You could start out with a little one. A two. A one, two, three. A three. A five. A four. A three, two. Two. A two, four, six. Two, four, six. Four. Two. Two. Four, seven! Five, seven! Six, seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! [holds up seven fingers]
I remember when I drove into Notre Dame, getting ready for the first day of work. I had an electrical charge go up my back because I realized all of a sudden that I was responsible for the traditions that the Knute Rocknes and the Frank Leahys had set, and what Notre Dame stood for.
I'm sure everything has a bearing on what I'm doing. My family is a lower-middle-class family, there's lots of children, seven brothers, two sisters grew up together, fighting with each other, went to school. My mother went to school up to 4th grade. My father went to school up to 8th grade. So that's about the education level we had in the family.
People ask me all the time if I'm from a family of writers. The literal short answer is no, but my father and his brothers and sisters and his mother are all people who would sit around with a Tom Collins and tell stories that seemed to get better and better each time they told them.
I've never been married, and I have no regrets about not starting my own family. I come from a large one, so there are so many people around all the time. I've been very happy, but I've never gotten married. That's about the size of it. I would have been a good father because I've been a father to my brothers' and sisters' children.
I have three kids. Now they're all grown up, but when they were little, every time I would start a new project, they would say, 'So dad, are you making a movie we can watch or one we cannot watch?' That's the kind of stuff they would ask. People around me - family and friends - usually know when to watch and when not to watch.
Growing up I loved this brand, and if someone would have told seven year old me that I would be selecting color combos with the originator of Gecko I would have cried.
I went to work at seven in the morning. Around noon time we got the watery soup. And we worked until seven or eight or nine at night, sometimes later. And then I walked back home - there was no public transportation - into that shared room. And if there was food we would prepare an evening meal depending on what was available. And then probably go to bed because it was cold most the time. And then start the day all over again, six or seven days a week.
Three coaches at Notre Dame made a big difference in my life, not that I played any football when I attended Notre Dame. But Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz - they all made a difference to me, and I respected them for their attitudes about life and how they handled loss.
I grew six, seven inches in junior year of high school, so I played guard my whole life growing up. So I think there's where I got my skill set from.
There are two kinds of people in the world, Notre Dame lovers and Notre Dame haters. And, quite frankly, they're both a pain in the ass.
