I'm Not High (33 page)

I had to ask her, “
The
Kevin James?”

I’d known Kevin back when we were both stand-ups out of Long Island, but it had been a while. It turns out he’d seen the direction I was taking and liked it. He came on my Sirius show to talk about
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
, and at some point I said, “You should do voice-over films, because the voices you do are amazing.”

“Funny you should say that,” he said. “I wanna talk to you about something, later on.”

When we finished the show, he told me he was working on a family film with a lot of voice-over roles for animal characters called
The Zookeeper
. It sounded great. We kept in touch and eventually he asked me if I wanted a part in the movie. It had a pretty intense cast—Stallone, Sandler, Cher, Judd Apatow. Of course I wanted in, but I knew not to hold my breath. Kevin could have the best intentions, but there were any number of ways it could be derailed.

“If it happens, that would be great,” I said. “I appreciate you thinking of me.” And lo and behold, it came together. I believe that if you’re doing the right things and being true to yourself, good things will happen.

Dad Moves In

Dad and Mom moved back north from Florida seven years ago after he’d had a couple of strokes. It just got to be too hectic to be that far way when they needed help. Now they live about a mile away from Dee and me and the kids. Over the past few years Dad has been in my life more than ever before. Most of the time it is great. But not always.

One day not long ago Dad and I were coming back from some comedy gigs. Our airplane had landed at Newark and was taxiing up to our gate. Out the window, we’d hear the jet engines start wheezing again and then we’d move a few more feet. It wasn’t enjoyable, but it wasn’t the worst thing anyone has gone through on an airplane.

Still, the dead air in the cabin was as thick as cream cheese. Everyone was a little sweaty. The stewardesses were sluggish and cranky in their jump seats. Their hairspray had long since stopped working. I looked around and every seat-back pocket was stuffed with crinkled newspapers and crumpled Dasani bottles. Some kid across from us had ground orange Cheez-Its into every surface. Throughout it all, my dad was a soldier. At age eighty-seven I would have been seriously cranky.

I first got the idea to bring Dad on the road a couple of years ago on the Breuniversity Tour, and we did the whole thing on a private bus, which was a little easier than getting him through major airports in a wheelchair. On the bus, we made our own schedule. If we were twenty-five minutes behind, or wanted to pull off at a truck stop for some beef jerky or a new deck of cards, no one cared. When we fly, though, from the minute we try to wheel through the security checkpoint, we’re always working against the clock—on someone else’s time. And it’s stressful.

But there was none of that to worry about now. We were home. The plane kept inching along, and then Dad turned to me and whispered, “I gotta shit.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s good, because we’re only about thirty yards from the gate. Just chill, Dad.” The guy often needs help in the bathroom at his age, and I’ve learned to avoid airplane toilets if at all possible. First there’s the smell, then there’s the turbulence, then there’s the fact that once you have two adult men confined inside an airplane bathroom—one of whom can’t move very well—it can get ugly in a hurry.

The plane stalled out on the tarmac for another minute or two. It wasn’t long before I smelled something majorly foul. I slowly craned my neck in his direction.

“Dad?”

No response. He looked straight ahead, hands folded innocently in his lap.

“Dad?” I asked again. “Did you, uh, holy cow
,
I’m getting a waft of something over here.”

“What?”
he said crankily. “I’m holding it. I’m holding it, jerk.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “Unless you count holding it in your underwear as holding it.”

Miraculously, there was a baby two rows behind us, and my immediate reaction was to look back at the family repeatedly, raising my eyebrows in a way that put the blame squarely on them.

Dad had crapped himself before, but never in a confined environment. My plan was to let everyone else get off the plane before we made our move. All I could think about was people stuck behind us, looking at the giant crap stains on Dad’s pants and getting a good whiff of it, too. I didn’t want to put the other passengers through that. And I didn’t want to put Dad through it. I had a horrible vision of something nasty rolling out of Dad’s pant leg onto the aisle and then getting tracked all over the place by those little suitcase wheels and people’s shoes. It would have been a nightmare. It could have potentially polluted all of Newark airport as people fanned out in different directions.

So when the plane emptied, I went down the aisle first. Dad waited in his seat. I pulled a wheelchair right up to the doorway, went back onto the plane, and walked him gingerly right to that wheelchair, and once he was in it, we made a beeline for the Continental Presidents Club.

Once we were in the bathroom, I pulled Dad’s pants down. It looked like someone had stuffed pudding all up and down his back. The smell was so foul I started dry heaving immediately. As I sat retching loudly, travelers flocked in and out. I was extremely lucky that I’d had the foresight to pack an extra outfit for Dad in my carry-on bag just in case anything happened. I cleaned him up and threw his old clothes right in the garbage. I feel bad about doing that to the Continental Presidents Club, but I figure I’ve racked up enough miles with them that we’re square. When I was done, Dad was sitting, in clean clothes, in his wheelchair. He looked down at the floor sheepishly and said, “I didn’t mean to do this. I didn’t mean it.”

“Of course you didn’t mean it,” I said. No one puts that in their planner:
Wake up. Have breakfast. Drink OJ. Read the paper. Get dressed. Get on the plane. Crap myself. Have my son bring me into the bathroom stall, wipe my ass, clean me up.

“I guess you’re not taking me on any more trips,” he said, looking up at me.

“I’m taking you on more trips, Dad,” I said. “I’m just going to make sure you don’t eat for two days before we go.”

The best compliment I hear after a show nowadays is when someone comes up to me and says, “I started watching your videos and I reconnected with my dad.”

If I can be a player in this game and bring humor to it, I want to do it. I want to use it as a forum. Is it tragic my dad craps his pants in a crowded airport when we have fourteen minutes to make our connecting flight? Yes. Definitely. It’s also funny.

There are a lot of people in my predicament, and we’ve been brought up not knowing how to take care of our parents as they get older. No one wants to face it. My generation and even the baby boomers have traditionally been like: “I’m really smart and I make lots of money and that money will buy my health and my parents’ health. When they slow down, I’ll stick them in a nice nursing home.” To me, senior citizens are just like kids. They don’t want to be stuck in a facility. They want to socialize and feel valuable, not degraded. They want human contact. Which is how I got to where I am with my parents today.

Growing up, I was close with my dad, but he wasn’t a huge communicator. He was always just there, like a tree. My attitude was: “I’m safe as long as that tree is there.” My mom was way more conversational and direct with me, asking about school and girlfriends. I bet my dad would have a hard time naming even one of my friends. But he was always there, which was more than enough. I knew what he felt for me.

When I first started doing stand-up and was traveling all over and I still lived with him, he’d show his love by making sure my car was fit to drive long distances. I’d be out doing something and come home and instead of Dad saying, “I love you,” he’d say, “The oil’s changed and the car is all clean.”

Once in Florida we were out at a comedy club and I went outside to talk to a chick, and when I came back in, there was a crowd around him. I thought, “Oh my God, here we go. Something happened.”

As I got closer, people were all staring at him and laughing their asses off. One guy turned around and said to me, “Can I hire him for a night? He’s
killing
right now.” So every once in a while, he knows how to rip apart a room. He wouldn’t always show that off though.

He’s a hard guy to get to understand, but overall, I know his behavior. And when Dad turned eighty, I knew he wasn’t doing well, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually to boot. He’d experienced some small strokes, which definitely did not help things, and as a result, he wasn’t allowed to drive his car anymore. But it was parked in his garage in Florida and he was fine with that. And whenever we came to visit him, he’d always say, “Hey, use our car. It’s got no miles on it.” And I’d drive him around in it, but after a while, without even asking him, my mom gave his car away to one of her kids. And I think that triggered something right there, and he shut the whole world off. We moved them up near us, and by and large he still wasn’t participating in the world. He liked to do jigsaw puzzles or read the newspaper and do the Jumble, or take a walk, or just go outside and get some fresh air. Now he wouldn’t do any of it, and he wouldn’t shower or shave. He’d just sleep for hours.

And my mom isn’t so helpful with him. Her idea of tenderness is “Here, let me get you breakfast, and I’ll also get you a napkin because you’re a slob.” They wear on each other. She’s great with her grand-kids but really bizarre when it comes to dealing with him. I think it’s partly because she’s still very mobile and he slows her down. She’s the same age as him. She must look at him and fear that’s where she’s headed. At her age, a lot of the care he needs is beyond what she can do. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

So I started bringing Dad on the road with me. He did six straight weeks on the bus with me on a tour of colleges called the Breuniversity Tour. The schedule, the pace of it, and all the new faces every day stimulated him, and some of his old wit and personality returned. On that tour I filmed a documentary about me, my dad, and aging called
More Than Me,
which ended up getting the attention of the Elder Aging Services of California. They had me out to screen the film at one of their seminars to a room full of the elderly and their caregivers.

Once the Breuniversity Tour ended, and I was doing one-off gigs, I couldn’t always bring Dad because it just wasn’t cost-effective. I have to pay for his flight, his hotel room, and all of his meals. So I’d take him about half the time. When I’d leave him, I’d come back and see that he was further behind. Withdrawing. Sleeping all day.

So with Dee’s blessing, over the past year, we started having Dad stay with us for a couple of weeks at a time. When he was first staying with us, he’d come in a room, look at me, and ask, “Should I sit here?”

“Sit where you want,” I’d say.

“Should I go in the kitchen?”

“Go where you want, Dad,” I’d say, laughing. “I’m not going to tell you where to go.”

I think my mom had some stern rules for him. But being around the kids and a house full of activity helps keep him fresh, and it actually takes some stress off of my mom. He still doesn’t ever want to get too deep with me. Everything is an Abbot and Costello routine. He prefers not to make sense much of the time anymore. On the road, when I’d check with him to see if he had any money, he’d often respond, “No, but I think I know a plan to make some.”

“Really?” I’d ask. “How?”

“I’m going to buy some pigs,” he’d say confidently.

“Oh, then we can have a petting farm?” I’d ask. “What are we going to feed them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how much do we charge, Dad?”

“Fifty bucks a head.”

“Wow!” I’d say. “Do you think people will come?”

Then we’d be off for twenty minutes of gibberish. He’d tell me he walked to a flea market in Paris to buy scarves.

There are times when Dad’s staying with us, and I’ll pull up to see an ambulance in front of our house. They’re there all the time, because Dad will have episodes where he has trouble breathing or just completely zones out. If I’m around, I usually don’t call them, because I’ve just been around the symptoms long enough that I’ve got a pretty good hunch if we really need medical help. But I wonder what I’ll do when he needs more help than the paramedics can provide. What if he needs to be put in a hospital? Do I want that? He’s had a full life. Maybe it would be better to just let him die in my arms.

Every time Dad passes out they want to ship him to the hospital. I did it enough times; they stick him full of needles and tests and keep him there for observation. Hospitals are overrated. They’re great if you have to have surgery. They’re great if you need that emergency care. But if you’re old, do they really need to keep you there for two weeks? Here’s what’s wrong with him: He’s eighty-seven years old. He’s
going.