Waiting for the Punch

by Marc Maron

  PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

  The biggest fun I’ve had is watching my girls grow up, and they are magnificent. Look, hopefully every parent feels the way I do about my daughters, but I think they are spectacular. When Michelle and I came into office the biggest worry we had was, is this going to be some weird thing for them, and are they going to grow up with an attitude, or are they going to think that everybody eats off of china?

  It turns out they’re kind, they’re thoughtful, they treat everybody with respect, they don’t have any kind of airs. They’re confident, but without being cocky. They’ve got great friends. They’re not stuck in the bubble the same way I am. They go to the mall. They have sleepovers. They go to prom. Malia has started to drive. They’re doing great, so my biggest fun has been watching them grow up.

  Now, unfortunately, they’re hitting the age where they still love me but they think I’m completely boring, and so they’ll come in, pat me on the head, talk to me for ten minutes, and then they’re gone all weekend. They break my heart. Now I’ve got to start thinking, “Well, what’s going to replace that fun?”

  ANDY RICHTER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR

  As I get older, one of the things working against my career is that I don’t give a shit about anything but going home and hanging out with the kids, and swimming with them, and cooking dinner.

  On this tour I did with Conan, he said at one point, “It’s just really hard to do these shows, and then go home, and the very next day, someone says, ‘Could you unload the dishwasher?’ You’re like, ‘Last night, five thousand people were screaming my name!’”

  I told him, “Yeah, but the dishwasher, that’s the real thing. That’s the thing.”

  There’s something in me, I’ve never had five thousand people scream my name. Well, I have, I was on the same tour with Conan and people cheered when I came out. But that shit, I don’t trust it. Unloading the dishwasher, I feel like, “I trust this. This is important.” I’ve got to unload this dishwasher to show these people, who, like it or not, are going to be the ones wiping my ass. I’ve got to show them, “Look, I unloaded the dishwasher. You’re going to have to roll me over in a nursing home bed someday.”

  BEN STILLER—ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR

  Working can also be a way to not stop and feel. That’s something I’ve learned over the years. When I actually stop, there’s a kind of chaos and there’s not order necessarily. There’s a real simplicity in working. I don’t think it’s a bad thing necessarily. Having kids, and learning life just doesn’t happen on its own if you just go off and work all the time, forced me into figuring out “What’s the balance?” I’m trying to figure that out still.

  PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

  I turned to my mom the other day. She was over, and I was trying to get these four kids out of the house. I just got down on my knees and I said, “I’m so sorry for every single thing I ever did to you,” and she said, “Well, you’re welcome.” Because it’s a full-time job.

  BEN STILLER

  The ultimate realization when you have kids is when you think, “Okay, now I’m going to have my kids and I’m gonna right all the wrongs.” Then you just realize how hard it is to be a parent, and I’ve made so many mistakes. Different mistakes than my parents made. Some the same, but I’m trying not to.

  You just realize it’s a really, really challenging thing to be a parent. I work and I know it’s important to earn a living and all that, and also for creativity, but there’s no way you can do that and justify it to young kids. They don’t know. They don’t understand why you’re going away.

  ADAM SCOTT—ACTOR

  I went to my daughter’s ballet class today, and I was watching her. All I could think about was her getting hurt. She was doing the most beautiful thing you could ever imagine. The cutest, most beautiful, incredible thing, and all I could think about was a whole fantasy scenario of tearing some guy apart who hits her in the face.

  Marc

  Wait, let’s play that out. This is Adam Scott watching his daughter do a ballet class, and you’re like, “Wow, look at that. She’s really doing a great job.” What happens in your head?

  Adam

  Well, last week, another little girl had pushed her facedown into a gymnastics mat. She got a scratch on her face. I guess it’s kind of fresh that I feel protective of her. I just had this fantasy of, like, a grown man shoving her aside or slapping her across the face or something. I went through this whole thing where I just beat the shit out of him, and I started sweating and getting aggravated. While I was watching her.

  Marc

  You’re sitting there beating the shit out of a guy you made up who just pushed your daughter out of the way.

  Adam

  A fictional person.

  JIM GAFFIGAN

  I was dropping my kids off at soccer camp, my older ones, and I brought my three-year-old. I turn around and some eight-year-old is bullying my three-year-old and I had to hold myself back from punching this kid. I do this, my wife thinks I’m crazy, like if anyone’s ever rude to my kid, I go right up to them and I go, “What are you doing?” And she’s like, “Jim, you look crazy.” I’m like, “I don’t care.” Maybe my kid will say, “My dad is crazy, but he’s got my back.”

  I grab this kid and I tried not to squeeze—I grabbed him.

  My three-year-old was wearing a baseball cap and three-year-olds, they’re like orangutans, right, they don’t know what they’re doing. This kid flipped it off my son’s head and he was kind of, like, pointing it at my son. So I grabbed him by the arm and I said, “You’re coming with me.” I went to find a camp counselor. It’s a soccer camp. The guy, it’s just like this summer Manhattan soccer camp, it’s nothing fancy. This guy’s like, this beats being a janitor.

  I said, “This kid was bullying my three-year-old son,” and he looked at me like, “I don’t care. I really don’t care.” And I was like, well, at least I did the right thing.

  STEPHEN TOBOLOWSKY—ACTOR

  While I was in Memphis doing Great Balls of Fire! is when I found out that Ann, who is now my wife, was pregnant. I had to tell somebody. I had to find somebody to tell. The first person to come in was the maid. She’s knocking on the door and it was like dawn, and I said, “You know, it’s a big day for me! I just found out my girlfriend is pregnant!”

  She said, “I’ll pray for ya, honey.” That didn’t cut it.

  I called my mother and father, that was going to be the “Mom, Dad, guess what? I’m going to make you a grandparent again!”

  Mom said, “Oh no, Stephen, no! Maybe you could get an abortion.” So it wasn’t exactly the vote of confidence.

  I said, “No. No, we are having this child.” I’d been through an abortion before with my first girlfriend. I think it was responsible for the end of our relationship. I’m not going to do this anymore. No way, man. I went down and there in the cafeteria was the stuntman of the movie, Dick. I went in and Dick was eating his eggs and grits.

  I said, “Dick, I got big news, big news today! I just talked to my girlfriend. She’s pregnant. I’m going to be a father.”

  Dick just stopped and he looked at me and he said, “Well, Stephen, you’re in it now. Let me tell you, pal, when you have a child, your life will never be the same again. Ever again.”

  My heart kind of stopped. I was like, “Oh, okay, okay.” For years, my story was the story of telling the maid, and calling Mom and Dad, and saying, “Ann, we’re going to get married. We’re going to have a child,” and Dick’s solemn blessing to me or curse or whatever it was.

  Okay, the addendum. Fourteen years later, Ann and I now had two children. We’re eating sushi in Studio City, California. Suddenly, I feel a pat on my shoulder. It’s Dick!

  I stand up and he says, “Hey, buddy!” He starts punching me in the stomach and I hate it when guys do that.

  He says, “We ought to play golf sometime.”

  I said, “Yeah,” and I look up at him and he has these huge tears com
ing down his face. I said, “Dick, are you all right?”

  He said, “I just lost my firstborn. She died of an asthma attack. She couldn’t get to the doctor in time. I had to tell someone. I’m walking down the sidewalk and I’m looking in this restaurant and I see you and your wife sitting in here eating. I knew you would understand. Let me tell you, Stephen, when you lose a child, your life will never be the same again. Ever again.”

  You know, a story isn’t an event. An event is something that happens, but a story has a beginning, middle, and an end. You don’t know what’s going to happen until something else happens.

  That was the addendum.

  BOB SAGET—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER

  I held a baby last night. This all sounds bad when I say it, but I held my friend’s baby.

  It sounds worse.

  Adorable little girl.

  It just gets worse. I really shouldn’t be allowed to speak any more. There should be an injunction.

  Anyway, she was just adorable. It made me think, I’m fifty-four. For me to have kids again, it’s unusual. You don’t want to be eighty years old and have a kid in high school. I don’t want to die on my kid. Then again I wouldn’t mind having a football player kid, like an eighteen-year-old boy that’s a big strapping strong kid just drag me around because I can’t walk anymore. Carry me like the Revolutionary War days.

  HANK AZARIA—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  It freaked me out so bad, becoming a father. And my wife put no pressure on me. She was like, “I don’t know if I want to do this either.” I was like, “Well, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to do this now.” I got obsessed with it. I started asking all my friends at my weekly poker game, “What did you guys do? Is that what you wanted? Is that why you got married, because you wanted kids? Did it change your life? Is it worth it?” They were like, “Shut up. Just have a kid or not. We don’t give a shit, do whatever you want to do.” I felt a lot of guilt, which was why I was so torn about having a kid.

  Once that kid’s born, what I didn’t realize was that you’re just—and especially with a preemie that comes ten weeks early—you get so grateful that they’re okay. Your first thought is, “Oh my God, is he going to be all right?” Your second thought is a selfish one: “Am I going to be all right?” Am I going to be okay, if he’s a special-needs kid or whatever happens? And that’s part of the whole journey of this. Then you realize, just for him to be okay, you’ll take it. You’ll do whatever you need to do in exchange for them being all right.

  For me, a selfish, narcissistic, egotistical actor, it was the only thing. I can say that he’s first. Genuinely, in my heart, I can’t say that about anything else.

  JACK GALLAGHER—COMEDIAN, PLAYWRIGHT

  When my son Liam was seven—he’s a teenager now—but when he was seven he was diagnosed with autism. I didn’t want to have him tested. I didn’t want him labeled, because once he’s labeled, he’s labeled for life. I didn’t know at that time we could control the label, that it didn’t have to be what I thought it was going to be. Looking back, there was some denial.

  He was always a smart kid. He started reading at four, he walked behind my wife and read an ad out of a newspaper from top to bottom at four. There were some social problems, issues with him. It got to the point where we needed help, and in second grade we had him tested. They said he’s autistic.

  When you and I are talking to each other, I’m saying something, you nod your head. Where did you learn how to do that? That’s through osmosis, your parents didn’t say nod your head when somebody talks to you. He didn’t pick that stuff up, he has to learn that stuff. For years, we tried to get him to ask questions. We wanted him to ask a question, because he would just talk to you about his day, what he’d been doing. We’d try to have conversations, and the question we wanted him to ask was, “How was your day?” I just worked on that forever and ever, with his therapist.

  It’s a really weird situation, because he has to fit in to a certain degree, to function in society. I don’t want him to change, that’s the lesson I learned, I don’t want him to change. I want him to stay as this person he is, which is completely different and unique. Honestly, a really different kind of cool, but he has to function in society.

  He’s one of a kind. You talk to him and you go, “Wow, this kid is interesting, he’s funny, but he’s different.” He has to fit in to society, this is the thing as a parent, when I’m gone, I want him to be able to function. There are certain things that you have to be able to do to function. One is to engage other people. He loves other people, and he wants to talk to other people, and he wants to engage them in conversation, he just has a hard time with it. It’s very difficult to describe, he just has a difficult time with it, he just doesn’t know how to do it. You have to teach him tiny steps, and things that you and I picked up, he’s had to learn.

  I remember walking across the playground with him at school, and he’s in the fourth grade, and he said, “So how was your day?” I called my wife and said, “He just asked me how my day was.” It was this giant fucking breakthrough. She said, “Liam?” I said, “Liam Gallagher asked me how my day was.” I remember saying to him, “Good! Good day!”

  The thing about Liam is, there are no physical cues that tell you he’s different. He’s not in a wheelchair, he doesn’t have any muscular dysfunction. If we see people with a physical cue, you know to deal with things a little differently, but Liam is not that way. You start talking to him and it takes you about a minute to realize, “There’s something a little different happening here. A little askew.” That throws people off. People just blow him right off, don’t want anything to do with him.

  I was embarrassed of him at times, because he’s my kid, and we’d be standing places, and he’d be bouncing up and down. I’d be like, “Dude, stop bouncing.” Then I had this moment with him, this really revealing moment, where I was working really hard with him. I rewrote textbooks for him, I just wanted everything to work. I had this really telling moment with him where he basically told me.…

  I was …

  I was doing it the wrong way.

  He told me he was doing the best he could, and he was really trying hard, and why was I so angry all the time?

  I thought, “Shit, I’m not doing this right.”

  I just stepped back and I let him be himself, and I watched what he did, and I followed him. Now we have a way. He’s my bud, I understand him better. It was me, it wasn’t him.

  I was always concerned about what people thought of me, and how I came across, and my image of what people thought of me. I think what Liam’s taught me, that I try—and this isn’t easy to do. Everybody says they don’t care what people think about them. I have gotten to the point where I care less about what people think about me. I take criticism for what it’s worth, and less to heart if I don’t think it’s relevant, if that makes sense. He’s taught me that it’s okay to be different, that it’s okay to be who you are, and not try to be who everybody wants you to be, or who you think you need to be.

  RON FUNCHES—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  My son’s the best. He’s been the best thing in my life, for sure.

  Originally we thought he was deaf because he just wouldn’t respond to things when you called him or when you made noises. We bring him to the doctor, and we find out that he can hear. They were like, “We need to do some more tests on him.” They did some test on him. This was when he was about two years old, and they were like, “Yeah, he has classic autism.”

  Basically for him, and for a lot, it means nonverbal. An aversion to certain textures and noises and lights. Just developmental delays, and things of that nature.

  Once we knew it became a lot easier. The hardest part was just being like, “What’s wrong? What’s going on? He won’t sleep.” He would sleep from like 2:00 A.M. to 5:00 A.M. seven days a week, and that was it. Then he’d be up singing The Jungle Book. It’s pleasant for a few hours.

  He would repeat several th
ings for comfort. He’d watch The Jungle Book on the VCR, and just repeat scenes over and over and over.

  You introduce things, and you add things, but it’s also very rigid. You don’t want him to freak out, so it becomes a battle of what you’re willing to deal with.

  It’ll always be a thing, but he’s very independent. He’s not completely verbal, but does a lot of mimicking. He’s very good at typing, though. He’s always been on the Internet and typing things out since he was like two.

  There are some things where he’s really awesome. There are certain things that he’s normal at, and certain things that he has trouble with. He loves cars, racing, computers. Doesn’t care for baths.

  Marc

  What’s the hardest thing in terms of dealing with it?

  Ron

  Other people judging.

  “Why are you so tired all the time? Why is your house a mess? Why do you always give in to everything he wants?” Because if he wants something he wants it, he needs it, and he will attack you or throw fits until he gets it, so you learn to pick your battles. There’s several times where people thought we were kidnapping him because he would just wig out because we couldn’t afford to buy him something. “Whose kid is that going off?” We had the cops called on us a few times because he was making noise. Even now if we go somewhere together in a hotel I have to let them know ahead of time, “Don’t put us near somebody else.” Because when you come up to tell us about a noise complaint I’m not going to be nice to you.

  The coolest part of it was learning like, “Oh, I don’t have to talk. Talking’s overrated. I can hang out with you all day, and not talk, and we can get things done. I know what you want for dinner. I know what you’re asking me off of glances or different things.”