by Paul Feig
My first experience in a movie theater went from fun to frightening when my mother took me to a double feature that saw a Winnie the Pooh cartoon inexplicably programmed on the same bill with the Rat Pack’s Roaring Twenties bootlegger musical Robin and the 7 Hoods. Sammy Davis Jr. sang, jumped up on a bar, danced a few steps, then pulled out a tommy gun and started firing wildly. As a trucker might say, I was “off like the bride’s panties” and cowering in the lobby before Sammy finished his first verse.
Circuses scared the hell out of me, both because performers always seemed to be shooting off giant cannons all the time and because the disturbing antics of the creepy clowns usually involved blowing something up or hitting each other with exploding sticks that would crack loudly like gunshots. As the kids around me were cheering and laughing at these allegedly comedic exploits, I would be fleeing for the parking lot like an extra in a Godzilla movie.
Those clowns also played into another of my major fears: I was afraid of anyone in a costume. A trip to see Santa might as well have been a trip to sit on Hitler’s lap for all the trauma it would cause me. Once, when I was four, my mother and I were in a Sears and someone wearing an enormous Easter Bunny costume headed my way to present me with a chocolate Easter egg. I was petrified by this nightmarish six-foot-tall bipedal pink fake-fur monster with human-sized arms and legs and a soulless, impassive face heading toward me. It waved halfheartedly as it held a piece of candy out in an evil attempt to lure me into its clutches. Fearing for my life, I pulled open the bottom drawer of a display case and stuck my head inside, the same way an ostrich buries its head in the sand. This caused much hilarity among the surrounding adults, and the chorus of grown-up laughter I heard echoing from within that drawer only added to the horror of the moment. Over the next several years, I would run away in terror from a guy in a gorilla suit whose job it was to wave customers into a car wash, a giant Uncle Sam on stilts, a midget dressed like a leprechaun, an astronaut, the Detroit Tigers mascot, Ronald McDonald, Big Bird, Bozo the Clown, and every Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, Chip and Dale, Uncle Scrooge, and Goofy who walked the streets at Disneyland. Add to this an irrational fear of small dogs that saw me on more than one occasion fleeing in terror from our neighbor’s four-inch-high miniature dachshund as if I were being chased by the Hound of the Baskervilles and a chronic case of germ phobia, and it’s pretty apparent that I was—what some of the less politically correct among us might call—a first-class pussy.
Even though I tried to conquer my fears as I went through grade school and junior high, convincing myself that loud noises could be cool when they came in the form of firecrackers blowing up model cars and Led Zeppelin albums turned up full blast, and teaching myself that people in costumes are usually only present when an event is supposed to be “fun,” I would still succumb to a fear of anything unknown.
Especially if the unknown meant I was potentially going to get my ass kicked.
One of the biggest unknowns I feared was high school.
In the weeks before I became a freshman, I was terrified. But it wasn’t because of the theory that being afraid of high school is really a fear of starting at the bottom of the social ladder again. Granted, it’s true that by the end of junior high you’re one of the “big kids,” the upperclassmen/elder statesmen of middle school, and then once you arrive in high school, you’re back down in the depths of uncool again, a lowly freshman ready to be humiliated by the older students. But that wasn’t the cause of my fear. Depression, yes, but not fear. No, the fear came from something I prefer to label “High School Folklore.”
A lot of my more irrational fears as a kid came from the fact that my next-door neighbor Mary and her older sisters used to love to scare the crap out of me. They’d always tell me horror stories about things that would happen if I did something or other. They’re the ones who, when we were all at the beach, put the fear of God in me that I might spontaneously combust because “it happened to this kid over on Moravian Drive after he stayed out in the sun too long.” They made me paranoid for years about a mythical “sewing bee” that reportedly flew into kids’ bedrooms and sewed their mouths and nostrils shut in the middle of the night so that they’d smother to death. And to this day, I’m still afraid to put my cold hands in hot water because they told me if I did, my fingers would fall off. Looking back, I know that they were merely having fun with my perpetual fears and my chronic gullibility. And in the weeks before I was to enter high school, their minds reeled at the opportunity to ruin something I was actually starting to look forward to.
One summer evening, I was sitting with them in the ditch in their front yard talking about stuff our parents told us not to talk about. It was in that same ditch, when I was six, that they explicitly explained to me what sex was, resulting in a strange fever dream that night in which I was lying on the ground naked in a dark room as a life-size nude Barbie doll was slowly lowered down on top of me. But as we sat in the ditch that summer evening and listened to seventeen-year-old Becky, the eldest girl in their family, explain to us what hermaphrodites were, she suddenly looked at me and said, “So, Fig Newton, you’re starting high school next month, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said proudly.
“You better be careful. They don’t like freshmen very much.”
A hot flush immediately went up the back of my neck.
“They don’t?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully not to sound worried.
“Nope,” said Becky, giving me a very sober look. “You should see what they do to freshmen. Sometimes, if you’re walking down the hall, a bunch of seniors will grab you, drag you into the bathroom, and give you a swirly.”
I looked at Sharon and Mary, who were listening to Becky, wide-eyed.
“What’s a swirly?” I said, even less successful in my attempt not to sound terrified.
“It’s when they stick your head in the toilet and flush it. Last year, some kid drowned. The year before, another kid got sucked down. They found him in the sewer. Long and skinny and dead.”
I felt faint. “Really?”
“Yeah. But that’s nothing,” Becky continued, leaning forward toward me to heighten the impact of her warnings. “A lot of times, what they’ll do is grab a freshman, drag him into the bathroom, and make him eat drugs.”
I was now officially in a panic. My dad had just the other night given me the world’s most sobering talk about drugs after he and I came across a picture of a hippie shooting up heroin in an antidrug ad in National Geographic. My father had sighed a scary, disapproving sigh, pointed at the picture, looked me right in the eye, and said, “You see that kid? That kid is the stupidest kid you’ll ever see. And you know why he’s so stupid? Because what you see him doing, right there, is throwing his life away. Right down the toilet.” My father then launched into a one-hour lecture, telling me that if I took drugs, any drugs—if I decided it’d be fun to “get all doped up”—I’d turn into a vegetable. Immediately. And all of a sudden, there I was in the ditch hearing that a group of crazed seniors were going to put me in a coma the minute I entered the school on my first day.
I came home very upset.
“Mom! I’m not going to high school. No way!”
“Of course you are. What are you talking about?”
“I’m just not going. Forget it!”
“Why not?” my mother asked, concerned. Whenever I was upset, my mother would immediately become twice as upset, whether she knew what I was upset about or not.
“Because they’re gonna make me eat drugs.”
“Who is?”
“Seniors. They hate freshmen. This kid was walking down the hall last year and a bunch of seniors jumped him and stuck his head in the toilet and made him eat drugs!”
“Where did you hear this?”
“From some kids who go to the school.” I figured my fear would seem more valid if I didn’t tell her that Becky had been my source. After all, I was trying to get out of having to go to high school,
not simply looking to be told that I was overreacting again.
“Oh, my goodness,” my mother said, extremely concerned. “I’ll call the school tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said, pouty. I knew things would be okay if my mom was going to “make a call.”
The next day, my mom told me that she had talked to Mr. Walker, the principal of the high school. Apparently, she tracked down the poor guy’s home phone number and bothered him during his summer vacation because of my paranoia.
“I spoke to the principal today,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed. Clearly he had convinced her that her son was crazy. “He said he wasn’t aware that any of this toilet and drug business was going on but that he’d look into it. He told me to tell you not to worry, though. He said it was probably just a story.”
Between my mother’s face and my reading between the lines of what the principal said, I immediately felt like the dumbest kid in the world. I started imagining the conversation that must have taken place between my mother and the principal.
“Mr. Walker, my son says that the older boys in your school force the younger ones to eat drugs.”
“Um . . . who is your son?”
“Paul Feig.”
“Feig? I don’t seem to recall the name.”
“Well, he’s not in high school yet. He starts next month.”
“Oh, well . . . I think he’s just been told some wild stories by some students having a little fun with him.”
“So, you don’t think it actually happens?”
“I sincerely doubt it, Mrs. Feig. If the kids have any drugs, I really doubt they’re going to waste them on your son.”
And then he probably hung up and mentally filed the name “Paul Feig” in the Whining Little Idiots folder.
That night, we had a very loud thunderstorm, and as I lay in bed and listened to the thunder claps rattle my bedroom window I started to hate myself for having spent my life up to that point being such a wuss.
When I got to high school the next month, still nervous and on guard, just in case Becky was right and I was going to be jumped, dunked, and turned into an addict, I found that high school wasn’t the jungle I was imagining it would be. More than anything, it just looked like junior high all over again, except that the girls were more mature and a lot of guys who were older than me had mustaches. And after a few days of being looked through like the Invisible Man by sophomores, juniors, and seniors, all of whom were having more fun than I was, I found myself with a new and actually legitimate fear—the fear of being completely ignored. I suddenly wished that even one of the older kids in my school would find me noticeable enough to merit a swirly or a forced meal of their stash.
Because, after all, if people are sticking your head in a toilet or shoving drugs down your throat, at least they’re paying attention to you.
NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T
My father has spent his whole life collecting jokes. From his years as a young man frequenting nightclubs with names like the Elmwood and the Top Hat across the Detroit River in Canada to his time as a father and community leader attending his weekly Kiwanis Club meetings with his lodge brothers, whenever he would hear a good joke, he would write it down and memorize it. At family functions or at dinner parties with my parents’ friends, ten minutes would seldom pass before my father launched into one of his “stories.”
My father was a great joke teller. He really had impeccable timing and could always land a punch line effectively. His jokes always received a hearty response and over the years I found myself wishing that I, too, could entertain a group of my peers as effectively as my father entertained his.
And so, when I finally got the chance, I jumped at it.
I was in ninth grade and saw a poster in the hall one day announcing that my school’s yearly talent show was gearing up and that auditions were going to be held the following week. I had attended the Chippewa Valley High Talent Show the previous year to see my next door neighbor, Craig, perform. He had bought a small Moog synthesizer and composed an original electronic mini-symphony entitled “Synthesis.” His performance of it consisted of him putting on a suit, platform shoes, and Elton John glasses, plugging his keyboard into the school’s sound system, and then turning it up full blast to show off every sound effect that the good folks at the Moog Corporation had seen fit to include in this starter’s package. I was in awe at the spectacle of someone I knew being on stage in front of such a large audience. And even though most of the people in the crowd were gritting their teeth and smiling politely while small children covered their ears in pain as Craig and his Moog assaulted them aurally, the effect was enough to make me vow that I, too, would one day be mounting that stage and taking part in this yearly cavalcade of teenage talent. Especially when I saw that at the end of the evening, a panel of judges voted for a winner, who was then awarded the staggering amount of fifty dollars cash on top of the honor of being voted that year’s most talented performer. To beat out everyone else and win the adoration of my peers was the most exciting and validating thing I could imagine happening to me.
And so, as I stood there staring at the poster for the talent show auditions, I was filled with excitement. The key to my acceptance by the entire school was right in front of me. And all I had to do was reach out and grab it.
The only problem was what I would actually do that could be considered “talent.”
When I got home that day, I looked around my room to see what inspired me. I had been playing the guitar ever since I was eight and had actually won a classical guitar competition in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the year before (it was only me and one other kid), but, having seen how many people had done musical acts in the previous year’s talent show, I knew that I wouldn’t stand a chance of winning against any of the girls from the swing choir who chose to croon out torch songs and usually ended up placing first, second, and third. No, in order to have any chance at victory, I would have to offer a viable alternative to the singers and musicians who made up the Chippewa Valley High talent pool.
It was then that the answer came to me—I had to do my magic act.
In true geek fashion, I had been into magic for years and had spent almost all my earnings from working at my father’s store on semiprofessional magic tricks and equipment. Knowing the success I’d had in the past entertaining the octogenarians at the various nursing and retirement homes where I’d been performing since I was eight, I figured that translating this success to an audience full of high school students and their parents couldn’t be too huge of a leap. And so I pulled out my magic trunk and started going through my tricks, trying to determine which combination of them would create an act worthy of a fifty-dollar win and the respect of my schoolmates.
I spent the afternoon assembling what I felt to be a strong routine and was feeling pretty good about myself. I would start with the Color-Changing Shoelace trick, followed by a few of my surefire show stoppers, which included the Silk Tube—a clear plastic section of pipe into which three different colored silk handkerchiefs would be stuffed and then blown out the other end to reveal themselves mysteriously tied together—and the Color-Changing Records—a cardboard record sleeve into which three black forty-fives would be placed and then removed to reveal that they had miraculously changed colors. Color changing was a big part of the affordable magic available to us nerds of the world back then. Sawing women in half and making tigers disappear were strictly for those who had the money and the storage space. I would then end my act with a prestidigitacious double whammy: the Hippity Hop Rabbits, followed by my always popular Drum O’ Plenty—a large “empty” silver tube that, once paper had been secured over both ends to transform it into a drum, became a cornucopia of silk handkerchiefs and colored streamers once the magic words were spoken and the paper was broken.
I tried out my act on my parents, who had seen my magic routine in its various forms for the better part of six years. After I was finished, my father furrowed his brow and said, “If yo
u really want to win that talent show, you’ve got to do more than just magic. You’ve got to entertain those people.”
My first instinct was to be horribly insulted at this, but I decided to hear the man out. After all, my father had actually entertained people in his time, unlike me, who had simply held the interest of a roomful of retirees who were happy to watch me as an alternative to sitting in their rooms and staring into space.
“Well, what should I do?” I asked him, trying not to sound defensive.
“You’ve gotta make them laugh,” he said, sitting back. “You’ve gotta tell them some jokes.”
I decided to give in to my father’s advice and work with him on my act.
Over the course of my fourteen years on Earth, I had always been a little frightened of my father. He was never mean to me or unduly harsh, but the fact that he owned a store and spent most of his time being in charge of other people gave him an aura of toughness that was always a bit off-putting to me. He was the very definition of a no-nonsense guy. In my mother, I found nonjudgmental acceptance and encouragement of every whim I had, whether it made sense or not. But my father was always the sober rule-maker, the one who would get mad when I appeared in the living room wearing an expensive Pierre Cardin three-piece wool suit on my ten-year-old body, a body whose growth would render the suit unwearable within months, or sigh in frustration at the news that I had used all of my grandmother’s inheritance money to purchase an electric guitar, because the acoustic guitar that I wasn’t that good at playing “wasn’t good enough to play rock ’n’ roll on.” My mother was my enabler and my father was my disapprover and, of course, I always chose my mother’s accepting ways over my father’s practicality. But now, sitting in his den with him, as he leafed through the pages and pages of nightclub jokes he had stored up over the past thirty years, I felt closer to him than I had ever felt in my life. Simply put, he and I were bonding over comedy.