by Howie Mandel
• • •
I feel that I have so much to confess and apologize for. To Riley, for the image that I instilled upon her pre-K teacher. To Jackie, for misleading her and letting her believe that her father was an outdoorsman. And to my son, Alex, for … well, let me just tell you the story.
One night when Alex was nine, he noticed a small growth on his chest. I was on the road, and Terry was freaked out. As soon as I came home, we took him to the doctor, who told us that it was nothing to worry about, it was just a calcium deposit.
When I was putting Alex to bed that night, he asked me what the growth was.
Without thinking, words just slipped through my lips. “It’s a boner,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“When you have an extra bone, it’s called a boner,” I said. “Tomorrow you shouldn’t take gym. You should tell them you have a boner, and you can’t do gym.”
Pretty funny, huh?
I then read him a story and put him to bed. By that time, I had forgotten that I had told him about the boner. The next day, I wasn’t home. Terry received a phone call from the teacher. In a very stern voice, the teacher explained that improper language is not tolerated at school and should be discouraged at home. If it persisted, Alex would be suspended. Terry asked exactly what he had said. The teacher told her that Alex was walking around saying that he could not take part in gym class because “my dad said that I have a boner.”
Terry quickly figured it out and tried to explain to the teacher that Howie must have been making a joke. The teacher—along with Terry at that moment—didn’t share my sense of humor. Yet again, I had acted impulsively, without thinking of the ramifications. My lack of focus distracted me from telling my son this was just a joke before he humiliated himself publicly in school.
While I’m on the subject of public humiliation, I have one more confession. My trusted friend and road manager, Rich Thurber, who has been with me since 1993, was not beyond the sting of my impulsive humor.
As an employee of my company, I bought him health insurance. He doesn’t like going to the doctor, but to qualify for the policy, he had to have a physical. In the days leading up to his appointment, he kept asking me if it was required. When I asked what was bothering him, he admitted that he had never had a prostate exam and didn’t want to have one. If you open up that can of worms to me, the fun begins.
For those of you who are not aware, a digital prostate exam usually consists of the doctor poking his finger into your ass. That’s all I’ve got. I have no idea what this test actually is or what information he is gleaning. All I know is that I’ve been in a room with a man who puts his finger in my ass, pulls it out, and tells me I’m okay. If you see me in public, don’t ask me how I am. Apparently, the only way to find out is by inserting your finger in my ass. The thought of this was terrifying Rich.
On the day of his appointment, he was visibly nervous. He asked me again about the prostate exam. “Everyone does it,” I assured him. “It’s not that bad. What’s the worst thing that could happen, a hangnail?”
As soon as Rich left the office for the physical, I called the doctor, whose name and phone number I found on the insurance forms. I told the receptionist that my name was Rich Thurber. “This is very embarrassing for me, but I’ve never had a prostate exam,” I said. “Is it part of the insurance physical?”
She went to check with the doctor and came back on the phone. “Yes, Mr. Thurber, it’s required,” she said.
“Let me be honest,” I told her. “I’m very uncomfortable with that. There is one way I could be made more comfortable. I need to have more people in the room. This is going to sound ridiculous, but if there are at least four or five people there, I would feel more comfortable.”
The nurse listened intently. “That’s not really standard procedure,” she said.
“Please, I will be there in five minutes,” I said. “I’m too embarrassed to discuss this in person, and when I get there, I’m not going to mention this request again. I’ll act like it never even happened. I hope you understand.”
“Sir, I understand,” she said. “That’s your request, and we will do our best.”
I hung up the phone. Having had many prostate exams in my life, I’m aware of how uncomfortable they are physically and mentally. I can’t imagine what it would be like if four or five people were spectating. I do not know exactly what happened when Rich got there. He and I never spoke of it again. I can assure you, whatever happened was uncomfortable for everyone involved. I would like to take this moment to apologize profusely.
I personally like the pranks that take a long time to come to fruition. I love planting a seed or giving out a piece of misinformation that escalates and pays off years later. And even though I’m a professional, one of the greatest examples of this actually happened to me.
It was my fiftieth birthday party, and all my friends met at a local restaurant to celebrate. At the end of the evening, Michael Rotenberg, my lifelong friend and manager, gave me an envelope and a picture that revealed something incredibly shocking to me.
Twenty years earlier, Terry and I had bought our first house. Michael and a group of friends, including Lou Dinos and Mark Blutman, had all pitched in and bought me a house-warming/birthday present with a unique story behind it.
Michael explained that they had all gone to the Beverly Hills Art Festival. While there, they ended up meeting the artist who painted the festival’s winning picture. This seemed like a unique opportunity. My friends all chipped in to buy it.
The painting was titled Seasons. To say that the painting was abstract would be an understatement. Michael gave me a dissertation on how the four seasons were depicted in the painting. I looked at it closely after he described it, and I swear to you, I saw winter, spring, summer, and fall. Because it was such a great gesture from my closest friends, I hung it in a very prominent place in my new home.
When Terry and I bought our next house, I was doing well enough to afford a decorator. He came to our house for a meeting and saw Seasons on the wall. The expression on his face was as if someone farted. “You’re not taking this, are you?” he asked. I told him it was one of the few things we were taking.
I’ll tell you, a tinge of hurt came over me. Not only was it a prize-winning painting, but more important, my closest friends had spent their hard-earned money to buy it. At the same time, I’m thinking, We’re paying big money for this so-called decorator who can’t identify a masterpiece when he sees one. Acting as an art aficionado, I proudly pointed out winter, spring, summer, and fall, just as it had been shown to me. He told me that he saw it, too. I didn’t believe him, but I was the customer. He put it in my new house.
Each time we moved over the years, we used the same decorator. I believed that because he had been made aware of the sentimental value Seasons held for me, not to mention its well-earned position in the art world, he always made a place for it. As I write this book, I now live in my fourth house since the painting was bestowed upon us. Our decorator delicately informed us that he couldn’t think of a place in this house that would showcase our treasure.
So we grudgingly decided to part with Seasons. My wife donated it to a local child care facility, where it was prominently displayed above a plaque. That plaque reads: “Donated from the collection of Howie and Terry Mandel. Seasons, winner of the 1985 Beverly Hills Art Festival.”
Jump ahead to my fiftieth birthday party. Michael hands me an envelope and says, “Here are some pictures from twenty years ago.” I open the envelope and cannot believe what I am seeing. There are pictures of all my friends, drinking beer, laughing their asses off, and haphazardly throwing paint on a canvas, creating Seasons. It looked like nine special-needs children with a broken spin art.
I’m now fifty-three years old. Three years have passed since the forgery was revealed. It was all a lie, and the painting is actually worthless. But a joke that takes twenty years to come to fruition is priceless.
You might think being the victim for a change would be embarrassing, but it’s really hard to embarrass me. In fact, I’ve been truly embarrassed only twice in my life. Neither of those times involved a practical joke. But both of them involved my daughter Jackie.
She was just about two years old and almost finished with the potty-training process. This would be one of the first times that I would take her out on my own. My wife dressed her up and put her in the car seat, and we were off.
As soon as we reached where we were going, my little girl looked at me and said, “I have to go potty.”
I hadn’t given this any thought. Horror set in because of my issues with public restrooms. I couldn’t take her to the ladies’ room, and the thought of having my baby sit down in the men’s room was even worse. Any public restroom is my living hell. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I meet my Maker, but if there is a heaven and a hell and I don’t get into heaven, they will leave me in a public restroom.
Rather than working something out, I turned to her and said, “Honey, I’m taking you home. You are going to go potty at home.”
She said, “I’m going to make here.”
“Please hold it,” I pleaded.
I picked her up, ran like the wind to my car, strapped her into her seat, and started home. I was speeding down the Ventura Freeway when I heard another sound from the car seat behind me. “Daddy, I’m going to go.”
“Please don’t go, we are almost home,” I begged.
“I can’t hold it.”
“Okay, I’m going to pull off and go to a gas station.”
“I can’t hold it, I’m going to go now.”
Desperately, I said, “Forget the gas station. I’m stopping right here.”
I whipped the car over to the soft shoulder of the freeway. There were hedges all along the freeway, so I figured I could take her behind them. I ran around the car, picked Jackie up and carried her into the hedges. As I broke into the greenery, lo and behold, the ground disappeared from under my feet—it was a ravine.
I fell flat on my back and began to plummet. As I fell, I tried to protect my baby by cradling her in my arms. I could hear the breaking of twigs and I could feel my pants ripping and the branches scraping my skin. Jackie began to scream, and I yelled, “It’s okay, baby! It’s okay!”
I kept sliding down, down, down, until I finally came to a stop in a mucky—I hoped it was muck—swampy cesspool of a puddle. I stood up, and with the baby still in my arms, I looked down at my mud-caked, ripped pants and bleeding legs. She was screaming and crying and still saying, “Daddy, I have to go!”
Terry had dressed her in a jumpsuit that was now dirtied by our fall. I gingerly unbuttoned it and pulled it down around her ankles. I held her out at arm’s length and said, “Go ahead and make.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m going to make on my pants.” As if that could make this situation any worse.
A brilliant thought crossed my mind. I would continue to hold her out in front of me. I would have her put her feet up on my shoulders; that way, she could pee straight down onto the ground. Apparently, however, the dynamics of female urination are not my strong suit. Before I could finish saying the word go, she began to pee. A fire hose of urine spewed directly into my face. I began to scream as I tried to shift her position. The stream of piss moved from my eye directly into my mouth. I began to gag. I was about to vomit.
And then all was quiet. I gathered myself. I removed her wet clothes. We just stood there, and I thought, This is why I’m never going to go camping … for more than nine minutes. I had swallowed a half-gallon of urine. My legs were bleeding. I was covered in mud—at least I hoped it was mud. The only upside of having a face full of urine was that my little girl couldn’t tell I was crying.
“Daddy, I want to go home,” she said.
“So do I.”
I put her under my arm and began to traverse the hill. As I climbed up, she also became covered in muck—I hoped it was muck. I could barely make my way to the top. The stinging of urine in my eyes. The taste of urine in my mouth. Blood trickling down my legs. And a naked, muddy little girl under my arm.
It seemed like forever, climbing, grabbing at twigs and rocks and branches to steady myself. Finally, I reached the top. I spread the hedges and could see the highway. I can’t remember ever being so happy to see the Ventura Freeway at rush hour.
Picture this: You’re driving down the freeway when a tattered, disheveled man, soaked in urine, mud, and blood and holding a screaming, naked baby, emerges from the bushes at the side of the road. As I stepped out, a car slowed down and the concerned citizen behind the wheel looked to see what the hell this was. He rolled down the window and made eye contact. I could see a confused glimmer of recognition as he asked, “Aren’t you Howie Mandel?”
I screamed, “No!” and he stepped on the gas and drove off. I made my way to the car, put my daughter inside, and drove home, where my wife was waiting on the porch. Needless to say, from that day on, I wasn’t allowed to take my daughter beyond a five-mile radius.
My wife had set up these parameters to prevent embarrassing things from happening. But the truth is that I didn’t even need to leave my own backyard to be embarrassed.
Let me take you to a different time, same daughter.
We had built a swing set in our yard on a small area of grass separated from our neighbors’ pool by tall hedges. Every day I would come home from work and Jackie would say, “Daddy, take me to the swings.”
One day when I was out there with my daughter, I could hear the neighbors on the other side talking. It was the first time I realized how close their pool was to the swing set. It seemed as if they were a foot and a half away.
I was trying to show Jackie how to put her hands on the ropes and move her legs so that she could get high in the air on her own power. She was just a little girl and could not master the coordination. I decided to help her.
I got on the swing myself and put her on my lap. I rocked my legs back and forth. Before you knew it, we were swinging. She was giggling and loving every minute. It was a beautiful father-daughter Norman Rockwell image.
I was grunting and pushing, trying to reach the clouds. “Oh, ah! Oh, ah!” I panted.
“Go, Daddy! Go!” she said.
So I grunted harder. “Oh … ah … oh … ah!”
Finally, just as I got my legs up into the clouds, through the ohs and ahs, I said, “Jackie, how does that feel?” I pushed higher and higher. “Oh, ah! Oh, ah!”
In the midst of the pushing and the grunting and the ohs and the ahs, Jackie said something I believe the neighbors will never forget: “Daddy, I can feel your penis on my butt.”
My entire being filled with horror. I immediately realized why the neighbors had stopped talking. As fast as I could, I jammed my heels into the dirt and brought the swing to an immediate halt. I grabbed Jackie and ran into the house. I can only imagine the sick and twisted image the neighbors had of my child rearing, no pun intended.
From that point on, the neighbors wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. They eventually sold the house and moved away. I guess the sound of a grown man grunting and moaning, “Oh, ah!” and a little girl saying, “Daddy, I can feel your penis on my butt,” is really hard to explain. As I sit here and write this, you can’t imagine how embarrassing it was to me. And this is one of those moments that make me not want to do anything within a five-mile radius of myself.
As I sit here writing, I should feel that the odds of surviving to finish this book are better because my heart rate is being monitored. The truth is that the heart monitor makes everything worse. My whole life is about distraction. Now I’ve got all this tape on my nipple and wires running inside my shirt. Just being aware of this makes my heart rate go up.
Because I talk about this problem so much in the press, a medical company has sent me a defibrillator. What am I supposed to do with a carry-on defibrillator? If my heart stops and I p
ass out, how am I supposed to defibrillate myself? I made my road manager, Rich Thurber, read the manual so that if anything happens, he can defibrillate me. If you see me lying unconscious someplace, please try to find Rich Thurber.
I have been getting progressively worse. Even though my medication has been changed twice, my heart rate fluctuates continuously. I can’t breathe, and I’m dizzy. My whole goal in life now is just trying not to pass out. The monitor actually rang in the middle of a live performance. I was forced to explain to the audience that the ringing sound was my heart monitor. “What you are witnessing is a medical emergency.” Their response was laughter. “No, really, I’m dying here, people.” They laughed again. I guess in comedy, nobody can hear you scream.
The next day, I flew home and went to the doctor. He decided that the medication was not working and the only answer, as he had suspected right from the beginning, was the ablation. The date was set: May 21, 2009.
A group of strangers are going to make their way through my crotch to my heart armed only with a camera and a laser. Dr. Cannom is trying to comfort me by telling me that I have a flutter. This is not comforting, it’s just confusing. He explained to me that the flutter, which occurs on the right side of the heart, can instigate the high heart rate and the afib. If he just zaps the flutter, all will be cured. Even though they will still be slicing my loins to get to the main event, they will only have to torch the right side of my heart. Oh, what a relief?
I’m not kidding you when I say I don’t believe I will survive to that date. At this point, I feel as if my body is taking in the minimum amount of oxygen. It’s the most physically uncomfortable I have ever been. I’m dizzy and weak. I want to pass out. It feels as if I am drowning.
The show must go on. If you witnessed any of the performances at this particular time, you might have noticed I was much less hyper than usual—though the adrenaline rush that accompanies performance anxiety helped to fuel me through each show. It was just like my showcase for Joan Rivers with a 103-degree fever. I began to refer to these shows as my farewell tour.