by Howie Mandel
I was sitting quietly in the car with Mrs. Weatherburn, waiting. I remember not saying anything for fear that she might talk to me and bare her teeth. I was afraid that those teeth might jump out at me at any moment. After what seemed like an eternity, my mother emerged through the hospital’s big metal door.
I remember watching my mom, who was my whole life, coming out to the car. I was so excited to see her again. She was carrying something wrapped in blankets. This must be “the baby.” My dad helped her into the backseat. Mommy leaned over, said, “I love you,” and gave me a kiss.
As she leaned over, I looked inside all those blankets she was carrying and I could see a little face. There was another person with my mommy. Who was this? Was it “the baby”?
From that moment on, my life was different. My mom tells me that my whole demeanor changed. My sense of contentment was replaced with agitation.
Stevie—that’s what they called “the baby”—needed very little attention. He had a couple of meals a day, a diaper change once in a while, and the rest of the time he slept. If you do the math, it worked out to about 5 percent of my mom’s attention. I received the other 95 percent. It wasn’t even fifty-fifty between the two brothers, but I was completely distraught. Up until then, it had been me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Now it was me, me, me, me, him, me, me, me. Can you understand how devastating this was for me?
Here are some of the ways I handled it. I would walk into the room where they kept little Stevie and scream as loud as I could to make him cry. Then my mom would come in and yell at me for waking up “the baby.” But remember, she was yelling at me, so I had all the attention. One time he stuck his hand through the bars of his crib, and I pulled on it as hard as I could. He had to go to the hospital because I ripped his arm out of the socket. That was horrible, but again, I got a lot of attention for that.
I don’t know how this is possible, but throughout our childhood, my brother always had—and continues to have—an amazing love for me. Whenever my mom got upset with me, she’d threaten: “That’s it! Wednesday is garbage day. I’m throwing you out with the garbage.” My brother would break into tears and plead, “Please don’t throw Howie in the garbage.” He was so scared that I would be tossed out and he wouldn’t have me around. My punishments seemed to punish him more.
I now believe that my brother, Steve, is the reason I have become a performer today. From the moment “the baby” appeared, I spent every waking moment trying to get all the attention. Regardless of whether that attention was positive or negative, it was attention just the same. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but child experts say that a good part of your personality and who you are going to be is formed in the first years of your life. If that is true, then the sick need that I have to be accepted and appreciated by people I don’t know stemmed from spending my entire childhood trying to get 100 percent of the attention. Obviously, you can’t get all the attention, but I promise you I’m still trying.
At age four, I was about to meet some other people vying for attention. I was enrolled in school. In the grade of kindergarten at Dublin Public School, to be exact. Looking back, I realize I didn’t have a lot going for me. I was allergic to dairy products; I was suffering from seeping eczema and constant ear infections; and I was a bed wetter. And, oh, I forgot, a maniacal attention seeker.
I say bed wetter because I wet the bed, but wetting myself extended far beyond the bed. When I analyze this now—not that I or anyone was diagnosed at the time—I believe this wetting could have been a direct result of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD for short. I have been professionally diagnosed with this disorder as an adult. The characteristics of this are an inability to focus, impulsive behavior, and being easily distracted. I have come to realize these symptoms have plagued me throughout my life. I remember thinking as a child, I have to go to the potty, and then I would see something shiny or hear a voice, and I would be off on a tangent. Soon, I would realize that my pants were wet, and I hadn’t made it to the potty.
I don’t want you to think I wasn’t innovative. Here were the remedies to keep the other kids from realizing that Howard had just pissed himself: Through a varying array of excuses, I would dismiss myself quietly before anybody noticed the wet spot covering the front of my pants, find my way to a puddle or a ditch, and submerge myself. There were no puddles or ditches right out the front door, so I had to travel a far distance to trip and fall into a puddle. But this allowed me to hold my head up high and declare proudly to my classmates, “I’ve fallen into yet another puddle!” Throughout my early school years, I was known as the kid who would fall into a puddle or ditch six or seven times a year. In retrospect, this seems equally as embarrassing.
My kindergarten teachers were named Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Judge, and I was called by my full name, Howard. I’m Howie now because Howard makes me cringe. Howard comes mostly with the connotation of anger. There was never any good news after Howard. Nobody ever said, “Howard, we have something great for you.” It was always a demand or a reprimand.
All I remember doing in kindergarten was arts and crafts. Once we were doing a landscape, and three days in a row I apparently painted the sky purple. The teachers thought I was trying to be funny or combative, so they made me stand behind the piano. This was my first sense of what it felt like to be an outcast. All of the other kids were having fun painting skies, and I was placed behind the piano.
One day, my mom visited me at school and found me behind the piano. When it was explained to her what I had done, she asked me to show her the blue crayon. I picked up the purple crayon. She consulted with our family doctor about why I would do that. He eventually figured out that I was colorblind. Oh, good, let’s add that to my list of attributes.
So I remember my kindergarten years as everybody playing while I stood behind the piano, not knowing why I was different from the other kids.
By first grade, I had other issues. Everyone including me knew how to tie their shoelaces. But when the other kids’ laces came untied, they would retie them. When my laces touched the filthy ground, I could not bring myself to touch them. My grandmother had not waxed the schoolyard. The horror of touching those laces far outweighed the embarrassment of spending the rest of the school day and my trek home walking like Quasimodo, dragging my foot so that I wouldn’t lose my shoe. It’s amazing that nobody ever mentioned how strangely I walked.
To this day, my mother recounts a miserable child walking home from school. She could see me from our porch two blocks away, dragging one leg with the untied shoelace behind me.
My young brother, Stevie, had a sense of the things that horrified me. Like most brothers, we got into many scuffles. I’m not saying we didn’t punch and hit and cause personal injury. But if I was chasing him, his last bastion of defense was running to the laundry hamper, removing the lid, and waving it in my direction. Just the sight of that lid was like my kryptonite. The tables would turn, and now he was chasing me. I would scream as if someone were after me with a knife. The lid of the laundry hamper doesn’t sound toxic, and I don’t know what I thought would happen if it touched me, but I was horrified and the fight would come to an end. Everyone including me just accepted this as the norm.
Looking back, I see that I was accumulating many letters—ADHD and OCD. It would take decades to solve this puzzle. I’d like to buy a vowel, Pat.
I remember agitation being the pervasive emotion of my childhood. I believe this is a rough start for any child. I was a lactose-intolerant, color-blind outcast with ear infections who had a maniacal need to be the center of attention, sometimes walked like Quasimodo, randomly fell into puddles, and had a crazy fear of hamper lids. With all these gifts, I was off to make my way in the world.
As tough as this sounds, I lived a wonderful childhood. One of the biggest highlights was our family’s yearly trip to Miami Beach during winter break. Remember I’m a Jew, so this was my Christmas. The night before the trip was like Christmas
Eve. I had always heard about how all the non-Jewish kids couldn’t wait to wake up on Christmas and open their presents. They would stay up late with anticipation and then get up before the sun rose on Christmas morning and sit under the tree with the presents until their parents woke up.
My parents would put my brother and me to bed early because we were leaving at four a.m. Steve and I had rooms across the hall from each other, and we would sleep with our doors open and try to stay awake all night. We could hear our parents in the living room watching Johnny Carson and smell the pizza they had ordered.
“Steve, we’re going tomorrow,” I whispered across the hall.
“This is great,” he whispered back.
The next morning, our parents bundled us up in our winter coats and put us in the family car for the three-day journey to Miami. They lodged a suitcase between us so we wouldn’t fight and gave each of us lame toys to play with as a distraction. One was a small game board of a man’s face that was filled with little pieces of metal shavings you could move around with a magnetic pen to make a hairpiece or a mustache on the man. The other was a piece of cardboard that had a sheet of opaque plastic on top of carbon paper. You could draw a picture and then lift the plastic to make it disappear.
People are probably reading this, thinking, I had those games, they weren’t lame, I loved them. So did I—for the first several hours. Let me go further: maybe even the first day. But for three eight-hour days, there are only so many faces and mustaches one can draw. And then let’s not forget about my undiagnosed inability to focus.
The anticipation of getting to Miami was my salvation. We’d strip off layers of clothing as we got farther and farther south, until finally we were in Miami Beach. I remember coming over the causeway with my face pressed to the window and seeing streets lined with palm trees and brightly colored hotels lined up on the beach. It was like arriving in Oz.
We stayed in what is now known as South Beach, either at the DiLido (now the Ritz-Carlton), the Nautilus, or the Surf-comber, always in one room with three beds, one roll-out for my parents and one each for my brother and me. I would fall asleep and wake up when it was still dark out, and then I’d wait until the sun came in through the blinds. At the first little streak of light on the ceiling, I would get out of bed and crack the blinds. It felt like days before anyone else woke up. As usual, I was agitated, but I couldn’t wait to get outside so I could be agitated in a sunny place.
On one particular trip, I was playing in the sand, which I loved. My favorite game was to dig holes near the ocean. I would dig and dig until I reached water, which caused the sides to cave in. Then I would dig faster and try to beat the sides from caving in. I don’t know what I thought the endgame was, but I kept digging. I never met any Asian people, so apparently I didn’t dig deep enough.
Sometime during my morning of digging, a sand fly landed on my leg and bit me. It wasn’t a painful bite. I didn’t even remember the bite, but I now know that I was bitten by a sand fly.
The next morning, I woke up with a little bump on my leg. It looked like a mosquito bite, so I scratched it. When I moved my hand away, the bump had elongated and moved a half inch from where it had been right in front of my eyes. I thought, This can’t be possible.
By the end of the vacation, I had about twenty of these bumps, which had grown to look like worms under my skin. I had one on my wrist and ten on each leg. They were itchy, and they moved. I was freaked out, and I sensed that my mom was, too, though she didn’t show it.
Three days later, after driving across the United States, adding sweaters and coats as we moved farther north, we were back in Toronto.
Our first stop was Dr. Weinberg’s office. I really liked Dr. Weinberg. He was a calming presence, but I knew that what I had was a big deal because the only doctor I had ever seen in my life sent us to another doctor. If Dr. Weinberg couldn’t help me, then I must have monsters living in me. I was really scared.
The new doctor identified this condition as larvae being laid under my skin. Apparently, the sand fly laid its eggs in me, and they were being hatched just under the surface. We were informed not to worry because this happened frequently … to cattle! After some research, I was prescribed a pill that, to date, had been given only to a cow. My recollection is that the pill was the size of a DVD—and not a great-tasting DVD, I might add.
The next morning was not unlike any other. I got up, brushed my teeth, had breakfast, took my cow pill, and went to school. But about an hour into class, I passed out in front of everyone.
Shortly after that, I was sent to a third doctor, who I now know was a dermatologist. He touched my bites and watched them move. He seemed excited by what he was seeing and asked if we could come back in two days.
Apparently, there happened to be some sort of dermatology convention coming to Toronto. Dermatologists from all over the world gathered to learn and study cures to various illnesses. Lo and behold, this dermatologist had found me, and I was going to be the prime specimen to be exhibited at his symposium: “A Boy with the Disease of Cows.”
After a couple of days, we showed up at the designated address. The dermatologist brought me into an examining room. He removed my pants and put me on the examining table. He began touching the bites on my legs, and the little monsters began moving under my skin.
The dermatologist excused himself and returned with four other doctors. Now there were five doctors standing over me, hemming and hawing at the movement under my skin. He then explained to his colleagues the necessary treatment.
At that point, I didn’t really understand what he was saying, but I can now tell you as an adult that he suggested liquid nitrogen. For anybody who doesn’t know, liquid nitrogen is similar to dry ice. It’s incredibly cold, so cold that it actually burns.
He explained that a sand fly had laid its eggs and their larvae were living under my skin. Every time I scratched one, it would motor to a safe haven. I did have enough wherewithal at that age to understand that there was something living in me. There is nothing more terrifying than picturing something icky crawling around inside of you.
The doctors all moved in closer to see the results of this experiment. I wasn’t given any painkiller, anesthesia, or comfort. In front of all these people, the dermatologist prepared to cure me of these monsters that inhabited my body.
The nurse brought in the liquid nitrogen. The dermatologist placed a drop on the ridge of the bump at the arch of my foot. As the drop hit the ridge, it actually sizzled and burned. I screamed. I was being burned alive in front of an audience. Not only did the bump sizzle, it bubbled and formed a giant blister.
I could see the flesh come off my leg and bubble up like a sphere. The pain was piercing. I was screaming and yelling. The doctor had the chance to hit only one or two before I looked desperately at my mother, who was crying, saying, “Please, stop!” Even the other doctors were telling him to stop.
That’s one of the first palpable memories I have of not being in control. I don’t know why I didn’t get off the table and run. When I’ve told this story, people say, “You were only a kid.” But being a kid almost gives you the excuse not to be in control. I don’t remember struggling to get off the table. They didn’t have to hold me down. I acquiesced to that horror I had to endure.
My mother ended the liquid nitrogen treatment by rushing up to the table, picking me up, and cradling me in her arms. In front of these eminent doctors, she ran out of the room, down the hall, and into the parking lot. I was still in my underpants, covered with giant blisters. She put me in the car and drove me home.
My mother seemed devastated for putting me in that situation and thinking I was in good hands, but I had been tortured. Even worse, I still had all these things living and crawling under my skin.
I can’t even begin to tell you what this did to me psychologically. To this day, when I think about it, I can see the image of my skin bubbling. It feels as if there are organisms trying to make their way under my skin,
and I’m taken back to those icky, creepy crawling monsters that need to be burned away. This is the feeling that recurs each and every time my OCD is triggered by the thought of germs on my body. Hence, I immediately rush to the sink or shower and spend as long as I can under scalding water, trying to wash away this mental torture.
Clearly the doctors didn’t have the answer, so my mom came up with a remedy. Every night after my bath, she would take a dry, rough washcloth with antiseptic solution on it and rub one of the ridges. At first it felt good, because they were itchy. The itchiness would subside. But she would keep rubbing and pressing and rubbing and pressing until eventually the pressure broke the skin and a yellow fluid would ooze out, which was actually the larvae. She would then clean the spot with the antiseptic.
We picked one bump a night, which she rubbed and pressed until it broke open and emptied out. When she had cleaned them all out, the treatment was finished, and the larvae never came back. If I remember correctly, this might have taken a month, but it seemed like an eternity.
In my mind, the nitrogen-on-the-sand-flies was my first performance. My opening act was a person playing with a canister of liquid nitrogen. I was in front of a group of strangers, and it didn’t go very well. Though I looked around the room and realized that my show had sold out, it didn’t feel good. I just lay there and thought, Oh, my God, this is the horror I’ve been sentenced to—as I sometimes feel today in the middle of a performance that isn’t going well. But I’ve never stopped a show to admit, “This is not going well … good night.” Nor has my mom run onto the stage, picked me up, cradled me, and taken me to a safer place. And God knows that’s not a bad idea for a closing.
Now remember, the experts believe the first years of your life form who you are. So there I was: a lactose-intolerant, color-blind, urinating outcast who fell into ditches and puddles, sometimes walked like Quasimodo, had a fear of laundry hampers, was a nesting ground for sand flies, and needed 100 percent attention. Welcome to me.