Michael Jordan And My Grandma

Tuesday February 17th, 2009 - Chicago, IL

Lots going on today both inside and outside my head. I don’t know where to start so I’ll bank on the power of celebrity and mention today is Michael Jordan’s 46th birthday. I will always remember that because February 17th was my grandmother’s birthday too. If there are two more completely opposite humans to ever walk this planet I couldn’t imagine it.

Who in the free world born after 1985 doesn’t know who Michael Jordan is? Even now he’s still a legend if not for how he played basketball but also for selling merchandise like Haines underwear and Nike shoes and Gatorade and who knows what else?. He had a big time run in the sun. He’s a marketer’s dream and one of the biggest pro sports stars ever.

My grandmother was born in 1911 in Waubeno, WI to a single mother which was not a very easy thing to live down back then. She was treated like dirt most of her childhood in a small town where she too was raised by her grandparents. Her grandfather was crippled in World War I and there was no welfare back then so times were tough at their house.

She escaped to Milwaukee when she was 16 and met my grandfather not too long after. I think she was hoping life would improve so they got married and if there were ever two people who probably shouldn’t have been married for 45 years it was those two war birds. I don’t think they should have been married at all but I guess that’s how the times were.

They eventually split up when I was twelve but they’d raised me from five months old because my parents had an ugly break up and I was going to go up for adoption. I’ve had many versions of that story told to me over the years and none were ever very pleasant. It was a bad spot at a bad time and for whatever reason my paternal grandparents raised me.

Gramps was to this day THE most positive influence on my entire childhood. I think I’d be a raging substance abuser of some kind or in prison or dead if it weren’t for the time he took to try and impart his wisdom and knowledge. He told me he felt he owed it to me for some reason for the hand I was dealt at birth and it’s difficult to admit your son is a loser.

Gramps died of cancer when I was 17. I graduated high school in June and he was dead by Christmas. That’s when everything really turned into a zoo with the family because he was the peacemaker. My father and I were always butting heads and when Gramps died it was an all out war. I never put up with my old man’s bullying and it caused major ripples.

Grandma and I never got along until I was in my late 30s. She was in her 80s then and it was only then she finally started opening up about her life. I didn’t get my first (and only) hug from her until I was 37. She eked out the words ‘I love you’ like she was trying not to wake a sleeping baby and it felt totally awkward. I said ‘What took so long?’ We cried.

We talked about a lot of things during that time and I made weekly visits when I could. I’d bring her a hamburger or a box of chocolates and she would absolutely go crazy as she never drove and was marooned in her house all alone. She appreciated any little attention.

She really opened up during those sessions and expressed her rawest feelings and all her disappointments of how her life had gone. That probably produced a lot of her anger and I know it bothered her how badly my father turned out. He didn‘t make either parent proud.

Eventually Alzheimer’s disease took over and she didn’t even recognize me anymore as I came over with my weekly meals. She would eat them and appreciate it but she had zero clue as to who I was and that was pretty difficult to sit through. I still did because I felt I’d owed her something for raising me even though it wasn’t the most pleasant of childhoods.

All of this still swirls around in my head and probably always will every February 17th because not only was it my grandmother’s birthday it’s also the day my father died. I will never forget when I got that news in 2007 and it’s one of the first things I thought of. The old man popped off on his mother’s birthday. Does it have any meaning? Who knows?

What a giant waste all this has been. Grandma’s dead and she never chased a dream or took a risk or did anything but be pissed off with how things ‘turned out’. She never took control and changed her life’s direction. Gramps and her were going in opposite paths.

My father was a complete waste of a sexual encounter and I still have no idea why I had to deal with that for so long. He was never the adult and I don’t even want to call our time of interaction a relationship because it wasn’t. It was one constant fight and he never did a damn thing to make up for his mistakes to any of us kids. He’s dead and I don’t miss him.

Michael Jordan is my age. He’s a little under a month older and he rose to becoming an international icon during that time. He talks of being close to his father and when he died it was a national news story. I always found that hard to relate to because my old man was such a wank pole. I couldn’t imagine Jordan’s good fortune. First his millions - now that.

Is Michael Jordan happy? I have no idea. I never met the guy but I have a feeling if I did we’d get along pretty well. We’re a month apart in age and of the same generation. He’s a human being like everyone else and I’m sure he’s not 100% happy all the time but I’ll bet he’s got a lot of opportunities to search for happiness that I or most others will never get.

I went off on such a tangent with all this I don’t have time to talk about all the positives that are going on and there are those too. I had lunch with Marc Schultz today and he had a DVD for me to look at with his corporate acts on it. It will be a good example of what I need to get if I want to get more corporate type higher paying work and I absolutely do.

I’m still working on my Craig Ferguson set and I also am walking in the mall every day like an old fart but better now than after my quintuple bypass when they blow out all that fast food crud and sludge I’ve eaten since becoming a road comic. It’s much better now.

The situation with my family is what it is. I don’t want to be like Grandma or my father. They never found their stride. I have and it’s being a comedian. Making other dented cans laugh takes my own pain farther away. Sad to say but some others totally relate to all this.