by Jill Kargman
Who exactly is buying those snot-colored cars?
What exactly is a flying fuck?
My hilarious dad, Arie Kopelman, is, at this writing, seventy-seven years old. A true comedic genius who can do any accent and countless shticks, he is part Borscht Belt, part Chris Rock. (Incidentally, he is Rock’s number one fan and was in the audience for an HBO special and the camera has him exiting over the credits saying, “Fabulous!”) During his years at Columbia Business School he tried his hand at stand-up on the weekends, with occasional gigs in Atlantic City and Reno. When he told his parents that he’d been secretly nursing this goofy passion, his father—a very cerebral, laconic judge who acted like he was on the bench even when the robe was off and the gavel put away—replied, “One word: disinheritance.” My dad jokes there wasn’t exactly anything to inherit, but he got the picture immediately and abandoned the comedic stage, only to go on to have an incredible career in advertising and as an executive at Chanel, where he was president for twenty-five years. He has a great work ethic, he’s a strong leader and a truly imaginative thinker, but I believe it was his humor that fueled his ascent in the corporate world. He still calls Chanel’s owner to share dirty jokes (the latest involving old men in nursing homes angling for hand jobs from the old ladies with Parkinson’s) or hilarious anecdotes (the latest involving heinously rude clients), and all his friends—professional and personal—say his perfect timing and unparalleled ear for accents are as good as any professional comedian’s or impersonator’s.
Lucky for my brother, Willie, and me, Dad has laced sage advice with his famous humor, his version of a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Here is a sampling of a few key winners—instant classics, I think—that Willie and I adore.
“If you stir shit, it smells worse.”
Indeed. This gem has come up at a kajillion points in my life and I have shared it with my own kids. Have a fight with a pal that’s all apologized for and settled? Let it lie. Annoyed by something that you’d like to get off your chest? Don’t be an idiot—zip that cock washer.
As part of the life’s-too-short category of wisdom, my dad believes that while sometimes we need to express our feelings, sometimes unburdening yourself becomes a burden to another, like tossing an emotional grenade. If there is, in fact, a desperate need, go for it. But always measure consequences before picking at an emotional scab. Example: You hear some beeyotch said something about you and entertain the fantasy of going up to her and asking WTF. Then it’s a whole confrontational bloodbath. What’s the point? What do you gain? Never let them see you sweat. Don’t stir shit.
“You can’t dance at two weddings with one tuchas.”
Slow down. Breathe in and out. Be present. We hear this a lot, but I prefer my father’s way less-wellnessy, woo-woo way of saying it. I’ve had several moments in my life when my ambitions got the best of me and I’ve run myself ragged. Workwise, schedulewise, running around in a stressed fog. The nadir was when I had three kids in three schools. I was schlepping all over the city and never stopping to rest and I got sick and didn’t get better; and my dad said I was too skinny. Which was shocking because he’s kind of a fattist; he unashamedly loves thinness. Not like Donald Trump or anything—he’s never said anything mean or used the word pig—but he has made it clear that he takes issue with gluttony in general. Trying to give the benefit of the doubt to all, my mom has been known to try to defend the people my dad is judging for their portliness (“Oh, Arie, maybe it’s glandular!”). But he is quick to chalk extra weight up to “open pieholes in search of seconds.” So I was floored when he commented I was too skeletorious. I burst into tears, saying I was tearing all over the city nonstop, juggling so much; and that, at the age of thirty-five, I was completely drowning in my life. I told him I was just one group playdate away from having a full-on Tony Soprano–style panic attack. He instructed me to scale back and stay focused, learn how to say no—no to charity committees, no to being class mom, even no to parties sometimes—because one can do only so much.
Breakthrough! It was tremendously liberating; now I don’t even make excuses, I just say I can’t do it, sorry. So when you feel pulled in countless directions, just stop, stay calm, and choose where you want your tuchas to be, and be there.
“That guy was born on third base.”
Sometimes my husband, Harry, gets discouraged by people our age (or younger) buying third homes and flying first class or throwing parties nicer than our wedding just to “celebrate summer!” (Attire: denim ’n’ diamonds). Some of these people, of course, have real talent and deserve all their hard-earned success. Others, as Dad would say, “were born on third base,” aka “come from the Lucky Sperm Club,” aka “had a huge head start with family dough,” aka “got beaten with the lucky stick.” Said stick is passed around Wall Street a lot and leads to shot-pounding dumb dumbs with luck-begotten private planes saying, “Wheels up!” (Newsflash: “Fire up the bird!” is the new “wheels up.” As in: “You guys want a lift to camp visiting day? We’re firing up the bird for Portland if you want to fly Air Goldberg!”)
My friend Henry Cornell is a totally self-made Goldman partner, and he said one of his five kids was complaining about something (as all kids do), and he just said, “Hey, a billion kids just woke up on a dirt floor.” That’s something my dad would say. He values hard work above all else and always reminds us never to aspire to the trappings of what seems like a glamorous life. All that glitters is not gold and the guy born on third base will never appreciate getting to home plate as much as the one who grinds it out and around those bases or who smacks it out of the park on his own.
“You marry a rich girl, you kiss one ass; you marry a poor girl, you kiss a million.”
Another way he put it? “You can make more money under the chuppah in five minutes than fifty years in business!”
You don’t know Arie, but if you’ve been paying attention to the other phrases here, you may rightly be thinking this one doesn’t seem to sync with the guy I’ve been describing above. Stay with me. He has a good point—more an observation about society than actual instructions for me to follow.
My dad said this to me—attributing it to his own grandfather (who may have used it less ironically)—when I was going through the phase of dating messy artist types who lived in total squalor. To be fair, I was just compensating for a nasty breakup with a polished, bespectacled prepster who made me alternately haul ass to his country club on the weekends or rot in the car like a dog while he visited his grandpa in a million-dollar old-age home that for some reason I was not allowed into. I drove the cart while he golfed and I recorded his scores diligently with a dwarf pencil stamped in gold foil with the club logo. After all that lavish greenery and the accompanying manicured country house, a painter’s filthy studio apartment with coffee cans filled with color-encrusted brushes somehow seemed super sexy. Picture Yugoslavia in the nineties. But it seemed oddly appealing, like I was playing a role in some abstract expressionist drama full of flinging paint and ruined shirts and the smell of turpentine.
But my dad got it right away. He saw the mental elastic snap I was going through. He knew I was rebelling against something. Relaying his grandfather’s line had nothing to do with income—he actually would have loved it if I married someone who had some kind of stable income, no matter the level if he loved what he did—but rather the lifestyle of artistic struggle. He didn’t want me paired with someone who was actually into the hand-to-mouth hustle. Still, I have to laugh when I think of the great-grandpa I never knew saying this to him. And though the era of making an “advantageous marriage” is luckily behind us (along with dowries), there will always be a funny unspoken truth about wanting a stable life. But Arie has always had a stern warning for the other extreme, which was even more significant.
“If you marry for money, you earn every penny.”
My dad is so morally sound that, while he never would have wanted me to live in squalor or be struggling all my
life, he also would never want me to be the thing he despises the most: a gold digger. Whenever we saw some crusty old gent—Crypt Keepers, he called them—with a blond cheerleader type on his bony arm, my dad would ask, “Would she be with him if he were a pharmacist in Passaic?” They might be getting into a Ferrari or coming out of Vuitton, laden with glossy, swinging shopping bags, and he’d observe that she might be psyched for a flashy Saturday night, but she had to wake up with him Sunday morning. Oh, and by the way, she had to FUCK HIM. Earn every penny, indeed. Life is too short.
“Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan.”
This Arie classic helped me during the years I trolled the lowest rungs of moviemaking development hell, seeking cinematic homes for my novels. Sitting in production offices, you’d think everyone in the place won an Oscar. Every office had framed posters of every imaginable smash-hit film. Scratch the surface and you’d find out that the person whose wall the poster hung on was, like, the gaffer’s assistant’s brother’s roommate or the coffee runner for a backroom executive, but still…they hung up the poster to latch on to the hit—which is great, because everyone should have pride in their work! The flip side is that if something bombs, everyone is lightning quick to distance themselves—“I didn’t have the creative control I wanted”—even if they did work very, very hard on it in a more important way. In other words, people pass the buck on failure but take full credit for success. Don’t be fooled.
“Money doesn’t care who owns it.”
The dentist who invented the tooth implant as we know it. The largest Jacuzzi distributor. The patent owner for temporary tattoos. You name it, there is a fortune behind every invention. And the eight- or nine- or ten-figure bank accounts often don’t match the look or taste or poise of the person who holds the checkbook.
Por ejemplo: Imagine a couple making a grand entrance into a restaurant. He’s cheesy and in a suit that could have come from the Sopranos’ costume department. She has a rack that could double as a flotation device if they were to wreck their yacht. He’s sweaty and meaty. She’s wearing a huge fur coat, a tiny bandage dress, and lots of bling. They sit down and order steaks, and when they come, one of them does what my mom, Coco, calls “playing the cello.” This is when, rather than holding a knife and fork like a normal well-mannered person, the person stabs into a steak holding his fork vertically, sawing away with the bow/knife horizontally. I might say, “Uh-oh, Yo-Yo Ma in the house.” And Dad will throw out that awesome line.
In late 2015, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about Klaus Obermeyer, the now-ninety-six-year-old founder of the Obermeyer ski apparel company. In it, Obermeyer attributed his great and lasting health to his daily workout program. My dad forwarded it to me with the following message:
My program is so much better, which is why I still look like a matinee idol:
1) I spend at least 45 mins on the pot, reading and pooping.
2) I stay as inactive as possible—vegging is a great way to think.
3) I stretch for 45 mins every day—my own Zen.
4) I have fabulous grandchildren to admire and worry about.
5) I read the obits every day. I am grateful for every day I ain’t on the list!
Aside from my parents and my mom’s gyno, who helped yank me into this crazy-ass world, the first person to hold me, hours old, was Dr. David Smith. As a baby burrito swaddled in my New York Hospital standard-issue blankie and pounding formula, I couldn’t have known that the man who checked my vitals under the nursery French-fry warmer would grow to be one of my favorite humans on this blue-green orb we call earth. The most brilliant pediatrician, with the best medical instincts and bedside manner, the man also happens to have a sense of humor that none can rival. He’s Woody Allen with a stethoscope.
My mother said that he never failed to crack her up, calming her nerves with funny quips and making even unpleasant visits, which involved booster shots, fun by being so hilarious. Once my brother, Willie, twisted his ankle, and my dad asked Dr. Smith if we should tape it. His response: “Not unless he’s starting for the Knicks tonight.”
Now, this might sound a little weird, but I went to Dr. Smith (I repeat: my pediatrician) until I was twenty-four. I just didn’t feel comfortable switching and he never made me, so it wasn’t until my parents strongly suggested that I switch to their internist that I left Dr. Smith behind. I didn’t know it at the time, but my hiatus from him would be short-lived.
I got married when I was twenty-seven and was pregnant one year later. My mom bumped into Dr. Smith’s wife and relayed the news of our impending stork visit. “Wonderful! Who is she going to see for a pediatrician?” she asked. My mom mentioned the woman I had tentatively picked (who seemed to be a bit cold to me and kept me waiting forty-five minutes before meeting her for the prospective patient interview).
“Oh, why? She should go to David!”
“I thought he retired!” Mom said, mentally tabulating his age.
Nope, still going strong.
So I called him up and shared the news of my baby’s due date and asked if he would be our pediatrician. A few weeks later, Sadie was born and Dr. Smith reentered my life. In the same hospital where he met me the same month twenty-nine years earlier, Dr. Smith held my baby girl.
“She is your grandpatient,” I said, hormonal and misty.
His hair was grayer, but he had the same glasses, same New York Hospital white lab coat (a vintage piece, as it had since switched names to New York–Presbyterian Weill Cornell blah, blah, blah), and the same unmistakable booming voice. “Dr. Smith here!” he said as he swept into the room. It was such a joy to see him holding my kid. He met my husband, Harry, and then my parents came in. My mom hugged him. In the years to come I would realize how special and important the pediatrician-mom relationship is. You’re in the trenches together. Every fever, stomach bug, vaccine, flu shot, and specialist referral I called about, I’d get that reassuring, superhero response: “Dr. Smith here.”
Contrary to my expectations, I was rocked with terrible postpartum depression for about three weeks after Sadie was born. I cried during Volvo commercials. There was one where the mom is picking up her little girl from ice-skating lessons and sees the girl keep falling and spending half the lesson on her butt, so the mom turns on the passenger-seat ass warmer. Bawling.
I am the happiest person I know and never got depressed, even as an angsty teen. But there I was, so elated to have this baby and yet feeling like I had a boulder on my chest every time I woke up. I had no help, which I realize was stupid in retrospect, and I was so sleep deprived I thought I was losing my mind.
“Listen, Jill,” Dr. Smith said to me with his forceful veteran’s confidence. “Stop trying to be a perfect mother. Try to be a surviving mother. If you can do that, you’ll be just fine and so will your kids.”
He saw me pregnant two more times, coming to meet Ivy and Fletch when they each arrived on the same floor of the same hospital.
When Sadie was little, she couldn’t pronounce Dr. Smith so she said “Dokka Miff.” It stuck. The whole Kargman household lovingly called him that, even writing it on his Christmas card. Through the years, Dokka Miff helped me find my sanity on many other occasions:
“Dr. Smith,” I sobbed, “Sadie keeps spitting up!”
“Too bad you didn’t marry a dry cleaner.”
“Dr. Smith, I’m calling from Paris and Sadie has terrible diarrhea.”
“Tell her to lay off the Bordelaise.”
“Dr. Smith, Sadie’s two and she’s still addicted to her pacifier!”
“I’ve got news for you: She won’t go to college with it.”
“Dr. Smith, Sadie is almost three and she’s still laying cable in her pants!”
“I guarantee she won’t walk down the aisle in diapers.”
—
Once, at Ivy’s checkup, he measured her height per usual. Ivy stood up as straight as she could, her huge eyes waiting expectantly for news of her
growth.
“Ah, thirty-six inches!” he exclaimed. “We can get you a job! We can use you as an exact yardstick. You can work for architects or carpenters or decorators—lots of people need a yardstick.”
Later I was so stressed out from the kindergarten admissions process and juggling my two small fries who were born a year apart (oops!) that I broke down bawling in Dr. Smith’s office.
Somehow he managed to soothe my frayed nerves, assuring me that I’d be through the swamps of Mordor in a few years and that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
I can’t even count the number of times he calmed me down, talked me off a ledge, and most important, put the kiddies at ease when a needle was coming their way. Not because of the free sticker box under his exam table or the promise of a lollipop post-shot. But because his warmth was so disarming that even the most doctorphobic child grew to love and admire him.
—
One day a few years ago, I received a letter from the good dokka. After careful and thoughtful deliberation, he had decided to retire. He wrote:
My heart will always be in what has constituted my whole life: taking up the cause of my young patients by helping their parents be the best they can be at one of the most difficult, stressful, but fun jobs on earth. The joy I have derived by sharing in the life of my families has become my personal pleasure. Being able to be a part of their growing up, following their lives from childhood to adulthood and (amazingly) into parenthood has been enormously satisfying. When parents were proud of their children, I was proud with them. When children grew into successful adults it was part of my success as well. What profession could there be that equaled my own?