I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  I studied the opossum for ten minutes. Its eyes never blinked. Its tail never moved. It didn’t seem to draw breath.

  I wrote it off as dead and walked away to prepare to draft a letter of confession and send copies to Ricki Lake and Naomi Campbell … and maybe head over to Denny’s for one of those Grand Slam breakfasts.

  Ten minutes later I anxiously wandered back to the alley and peered into the garbage can. To my delight the opossum was gone. Then I was overcome by a sense of dread. What if some dog had carried it off? What if, instead of playing possum, it was now breakfast?

  Maggie?

  The Bar Mitzvah Boy Blues

  Yesterday was my son, Michael’s, bar mitzvah. According to Jewish tradition, this ceremony marks the day a thirteen-year-old boy becomes a man. This tradition obviously began in the old days—before “middle school.” As soon as a kid turned thirteen, he was out in the fields picking dates and herding sheep (or dating sheep in the remote regions). By fifteen, he was married. By eighteen, he was having a midlife crisis and shopping for a faster donkey.

  If only it still worked that way. Then I wouldn’t have to keep socking away money for college, and I could spend it on something worthwhile—like hair plugs and a set of Callaway Steelhead Woods.

  Still, bar mitzvahs are great entertainment, although they do create a certain unease for gentiles who are unfamiliar with the event. My friend Nancy, a shiksa if there ever was one, asked, “Do I have to eat gefilte fish, or could I say a few Hail Marys instead?”

  Sometimes you can have fun with the fact that the rituals of bar mitzvahs are mysterious to gentiles. For example, I told Michael Wilbon that at some point during the luncheon he would be circumcised. (I understand the anxiety. If I was invited to Easter dinner at a Catholic’s home, I’d want to know, “Is someone going to ask me if I killed their Lord?”)

  I remember going to bar mitzvahs when I was my son’s age. It’s a great thing being a thirteen-year-old boy at a bar mitzvah. First of all, the thirteen-year-old girls are there, and they’re fantastic! You’ve never seen them like this before. They’re dressed up, their hair is done, they’ve got perfume on—and for the first time in your life you actually want to dance with them.

  Something wonderful happens when you hold them in your arms. I recall coming home breathless, with some girl’s perfume on my cheek, and my knees literally knocking. Which, in retrospect, qualified me to be president.

  (Speaking of girls like you’ve never seen them before, last Wednesday, seventy-two hours before the bar mitzvah, my daughter showed me what she intended to wear. She claimed it was a skirt. I called it a napkin. “You are not wearing that to a house of worship,” I told her. “The House of Blues, maybe, but not a house of worship.” I’d seen more material on an oven mitt. I went right out and bought her a dress the Amish would be proud of. After she wore it, she used it as a pool cover.)

  The bar mitzvah boy may not actually be a man that day, but at these parties you see what it’s like to be a man. You see adult men smoking and drinking and eating and dancing dirty, and you think to yourself: What a putz. I’ve been worrying about spelling homework. Where can I get me some of this?

  As father of the bar mitzvah boy, I have a limited role. During the service, I get to say a small prayer. I was encouraged to keep it brief, as parents tend to gush on and on, extolling their children as brilliant students, tireless workers for world peace, and humble, caring angels who would never, ever set off a stink bomb in the Willow Wood Manor Assisted Living Wellness Center, despite what you may have read.

  The speeches often last so long that, by the end, the bar mitzvah boy has outgrown his suit. I went to a bar mitzvah in Boca Raton where the mother got up to speak, and after dabbing at her eyes with both hands so everyone could see her jewelry, her first words were, “Can we dim the lights now so I can start the slide show?”

  I remember when my daughter, Elizabeth, was bat mitzvahed three years ago, and I was called to meet with the rabbi. I told him what I’d thought about saying during the service, including some A-list jokes, like the one about a rabbi, a priest, and a minister who go golfing together.

  It seems they’re stuck behind an unbelievably slow group. The front nine holes take them four full hours to play, and they seek out the course’s golf pro to complain.

  “Oh, but the people in front of you are blind,” the pro explains.

  “Blind!” the minister says. “It’s a miracle. I’m so moved I’m going to compose a sermon on how inspirational these men are.”

  “Blind!” the priest says. “I’m so impressed I’m going to tell this to the Vatican and urge them to make a charitable contribution in these men’s names.”

  “Blind, huh?” the rabbi says. “So why can’t they play at night?”

  The rabbi said that a temple was an inappropriate setting to do shtick, and that whatever I said had to be very brief and somber. I ended up offering this small, somber prayer: “Thank you, God, for enabling me to find a good parking space.”

  And I sat down while the rabbi went into his sermon. Which consisted of, one after another, every line I’d given him. The duck joke. The O’Malley twins. The whole Sol and Sadie catalog, including the best one: Sol and Sadie have just gotten married. Sol is eighty-six, and Sadie is eighty-three. Sadie says, “Sol, it’s our wedding night. Come up the stairs and make love to me.” And Sol says, “I can only do one or the other.”

  And he crushed! He closed by saying, “I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress, and drive home safely.”

  My agent had come down from New York for the bat mitzvah. She loved him. He’s on Comedy Central now with his own show, The Jolly Jew.

  So I vowed not to make that mistake again. This time I was ready. I tailored the jokes to the crowd: Sol is driving down the highway to Miami Beach when he gets a worried call from Sadie on the car phone. “Sol, I just heard on the news there’s a car going the wrong way on I-95. Please be careful.” And Sol says, “It’s not just one car, Sadie, it’s hundreds of them!”

  “But aren’t you concerned that you humiliated your son?” I was asked.

  My very existence humiliates my children. So what the heck.

  “A rabbi, a priest, and Boutrous Boutros-Ghali are in a canoe …”

  Now Playing: Waiting for Gazdluzky

  Here is my life, in two acts.

  ACT I. THE TELEPHONE MESSAGES

  “Hi, I’m home. Did anybody call?” I ask my daughter, who is lying on the couch, watching MTV with her face so close to the set that if Britney Spears’s new augmented breasts explode, she will be toweling off silicone.

  “Yeah. One call. I took a message,” she says.

  I see scribble on a piece of paper.

  It looks like “Bleev Gazdluzky.”

  “Sweetheart,” I say, “this looks like ‘Bleev Gazdluzky.’ ”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bleev?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of a name is Bleev?” I ask.

  There is no answer from my daughter. She is entranced by some rap group on TV. I think they are exhorting her to commit first-degree felonies.

  “Elizabeth? Elizabeth?”

  “What do you want?” she says in exasperation. “You’ve been in the house for two minutes, and you’ve already asked me a million questions.”

  “Who is Bleev Gazdluzky?”

  She throws her hands in the air. “How should I know? They called for you,” she says.

  “They?”

  I ponder this for a second, and seek to ask a follow-up question, but my daughter has stormed out of the room and into the den, where she immediately throws herself on another couch and turns on MTV. She is done with this conversation. I have driven her from the room. It must have been something I said—perhaps “Hi, I’m home.”

  The fact is I am lucky to get the message that “Bleev Gazdluzky” called, whoever they are. Most of the time neither of my teenage children writes down any
message at all. Not that they don’t care about phone messages. They care avidly about phone messages. The first thing they do coming in the door is replay the message tape, deleting all the nuisance messages—the ones that aren’t for them.

  What do your kids care if someone from the IRS called. The IRS—is that, like, the surviving members of INXS?

  My aunt called three times in one day last week with news about my father, who had broken his hip, then called me at work to find out why I hadn’t responded.

  “Don’t you care that your father is in the hospital?” she scolded me.

  What???

  “Did Aunt Shirley call yesterday?” I asked the kids.

  My son, Michael, shrugged. “Yesterday” is a tough concept for him. He has the attention span of goat cheese; sometimes at breakfast he’ll ask, “What meal is this?” Anything that happened more than ten minutes ago is prehistoric, like the Fonz.

  “Yeah. She did,” my daughter said. “She called a few times, actually.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.

  Her response was classic sixteen: “Why are you always picking on me?”

  Sometimes, they’ll manage to relay an actual name, “Mark,” then half a phone number: “96685.”

  “Mark who? Was Mark a first name or a last name?” I’ll ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what is this number? A phone number has more digits than this. This is a Zip code. There’s no way I can call this Mark back.”

  “That’s too bad,” the kids say. “He said it was urgent.”

  ACT II. THE DOG

  Have you noticed that it gets light now at 5:03 A.M.? Of course you haven’t. You’re sound asleep at 5:03, like you should be. That’s because you don’t have a satanic dog who wakes you at the first sign of light by sitting at the edge of your bed, her wet nose a mere three inches from yours, whimpering and whining in a pitch only you can hear. Not your spouse. Not your kids. Not anyone in the world but you. She’s like a cell phone vibrating in your pocket—only you can’t throw her against the wall. (And that new legislation makes it a little late to sell her to the Burlington Coat Factory.)

  That’s amazing, isn’t it, how a dog can home in on one person’s frequency, and the rest of the people in your house wouldn’t hear the Mir space station if it crashed through the upstairs bathroom?

  In her Tony-whistle whine she is saying to me: “Take me out now, stupid. Take me out so early, they’re still serving drinks downtown. Take me out now so that when we come home I can fall asleep on the cool tile floor, because I’m a dog and I can sleep anywhere, whenever I want—and you’re totally screwed for the rest of the day. You’re up at 5:03 A.M. You’re meat. I own you.”

  It’s not enough for me to simply open the door and let the dog go outside by herself, like every other dog in America. Oh, no, not Ms. Maggie the Queen Mum. She won’t go! She stands by the door whimpering for me to leash her up and take her on a walk—so she can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Nothing comes out of her body but dog laughter.

  Why?

  Because it’s too early!

  It’s barely dawn. Why would she have to tinkle now? It’s not like she’s a sixty-year-old with a prostate problem. She’s a dog!

  She walks briskly for a few blocks, barely deigning to sniff the ground, then she sashays home. Now it is 5:12 A.M., and the little rodent bounds up the stairs, jumps on my bed, lays her head on my pillow, and falls blissfully asleep, laughing to herself about the tale she can tell the other dogs when they play poker, like in the velvet paintings.

  “You know Tony? That fat bald dope I live with? I gave him such shpilkes when I yanked his chain this morning …” [sounds of slobbering dog guffaws]

  And hopelessly wide awake, I stare at the ceiling, obsessed with a single thought. Who the heck is Bleev?

  Unhappy Campers

  My birthday was the other day, and my sweet baboo Elizabeth, who is at summer camp, sent me a card. Here is what my loving, sentimental daughter wrote:

  “Happy B-day! Kate said her parents are sending 200 extra dollars for her to use at the mall. Getting any ideas? No, but really $100 isn’t enough for our trip to the mall. I would really appreciate it if you would send up more money. I’m sorry to bother you about this in your B-day card, but I had to talk to you before it was too late. P.S. Please show this letter to Mom.”

  Parents of fifteen-year-old girls will recognize the basic structure:

  There is an introductory thought about you. Now, here is the urgency of my need. And make sure you show it to Mom, who is even more of a sucker than you are.

  Of course, I did what any parent would do upon receipt of such a letter. I laughed.

  “There’s no way Kate’s parents are sending her two hundred dollars to go to some mall in West Virginia,” I said. “You can buy the entire state for a hundred thirty-five. Half the homes there are on wheels!”

  So I called Kate’s parents.

  “Elizabeth says you’re sending Kate two hundred dollars for a trip to the mall?” I asked.

  “No, we sent twenty dollars,” they said.

  Hmmm.

  “Maybe she just forgot to write in the decimal point,” my son offered.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Dershowitz, but was I talking to you?”

  Again, parents of fifteen-year-olds will recognize the pattern.

  Write “200.” If you’re confronted with “20,” say something like: “Oops, my pen slipped.” (Politicians under investigation by independent counsels might recognize this defense as plausible deniability.)

  Time and again my daughter and I butt heads about “freedom issues,” including money, curfew, and what types of movies she is allowed to see. I think I can fairly state both our positions. Her position is, “Come on, I’m fifteen.” My position is, “Come on, you’re fifteen.”

  Recognize this conversation?

  “Hi, Dad. My friends were going to the movies tonight, and I’d like to go, too.”

  “What will you be seeing?”

  “Um, I don’t know, something educational.”

  “Oh? Recommended by Dr. Stephen Hawking, I’m sure. Can you tell me the name of it?”

  “I’m Going to Slash Your Throat and Mutilate Your Mama. But it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds,” she’ll say perkily. “One of the girls from Friends is in it.”

  “Great. And what might it be rated?”

  “Um, PG?”

  “Come on, honey, it’s a slasher movie. It’s a hard R. They won’t even sell you a ticket.”

  “Carla’s mother is buying the tickets.”

  “Carla’s mother thinks it’s okay for kids to see this crap? What’s Carla’s number? I’m going to call her mother right now.”

  Suddenly there is a gasp from my daughter. Followed by tears.

  “You do this all the time, Dad. You are the strictest parent in the whole world. If it was up to you, all I would see is The Sound of Music with those stupid kids, in their stupid Swiss cheese outfits, singing, ‘Do, a deer, a female deer.’ Agggghh. I hate you. And don’t you dare call Carla’s mother and embarrass me. You treat me like I’m still fourteen!”

  So of course, I let her go to the movie, which starts at 7:15—provided she calls me as soon as it’s over, which I tell her will be 9 P.M.

  See if you recognize this one:

  “Hi, Dad, it’s Liz.”

  “Where have you been? I told you to call at nine,” I’ll say.

  “No, you told me to call at ten.”

  “Well, it’s eleven-fifteen.”

  “It is?”

  “Sweetheart,” I’ll say. “You have a watch on, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “WELL, WHAT TIME IS IT ON YOUR WATCH?”

  “Um, my watch is broken.” (A variation of “Oops, my pen slipped.”)

  “Okay, where are you? Are you still at the movie theater?” I’ll ask.

  “We didn’t actually go to the movie. We, um, went to Georg
etown instead.”

  “You did WHAT???”

  “Yes, but I thought you would be happy because I didn’t go to an R-rated movie.”

  I give my daughter ten dollars a week allowance. She tells me all her friends get twenty-five dollars—everybody in the school. I’m always the only one who’s so strict. In all of history there’s John Calvin and me. I passed Hitler.

  I offered her five dollars more for emptying the dishwasher twice a week. Easy money, right? She did it for two weeks, then started complaining about the number of plates and utensils that her brother used.

  “Everything in here is his,” she said. “I’m tired of putting away his stuff. He’s doing it deliberately. It’s not fair to me. I think he should eat with his hands.”

  The new battleground is her ears.

  See if this is familiar. She wants a second earring hole. And another in her upper ear cartilage.

  All her friends have them. (“And don’t you dare call their parents.”)

  She has changed her tactic on getting new holes lately. Now, before asking, she gives me a hug, and tells me how much she loves me. She actually purrs. I can only assume she saw this behavior in a Cameron Diaz movie. Sadly, I’m not Ben Stiller. I’m old enough to be Jerry Stiller.

  “You’re too young,” I say. “Wait until you get to college.”

  The truth is, I don’t care about a second earring. I’m trying to draw the line at her ears so I don’t have to hear about tongue studs and bellybutton rings. I live in fear of going into my daughter’s room to kiss her good-night and discovering she has driven a ten-penny nail through her upper lip, or has stapled her fingers together in the name of fashion.

  So my standard answer to everything she asks for is “Wait until you get to college.”

  I went to college. I know how it works. Like my parents before me, I figure what I don’t see can’t hurt me.

  On her first trip home she’ll probably have a huge tattoo across her stomach that says, YOU HAPPY? I WAITED UNTIL I GOT TO COLLEGE.