I hope I'm leaving it the right way. I really do. Tomorrow I celebrate (really? Celebrate?) 50 years of life. (Technically, my birthday falls on Sunday. But who the shit parties on Sunday?) I said I was going to finish putting the book online before my birthday, and I will at least have accomplished that. For those of you who have stuck with me from Chapter One, my appreciation and outright love for you knows no boundaries. And thank you to everyone who contributed financially, or simply by telling a friend or two about the blog, and passing these chapters along. If I ever get to see any of you face-to-face, I will hug the shit out of you. (That sounded way better in my head.)
And so, here is the final chapter of Making Sh*t Up: An Improvised Life, which is a book I wrote. And lived. And a book you read all the way to the end. Thanks for that.
Chapter Thirty-Six
When Shit Comes Around
One last Wishbone story for the road. Whatever religion or belief system you
happen to be a part of, I’ll bet there’s a bit in there somewhere that says,
essentially, “It all comes back around.” What
you put out in the world is almost always what you’ll get back. What follows is
the best example of that from my professional life, and one that still chokes
me the fuck up, even as I’m writing about it. Bear with me, kids.
The year was 1997. We were in pre-production on the second season of Wishbone. I’ve already made it evident
how I was feeling about the corporate types at Lyrick Studios during those
days, so I was none too happy when I got a call from one of them, a woman from
the Public Relations Department. She explained to me that she’d gotten a call
from the director of Parkland Hospital in Dallas. The story went like this:
There was a family of missionaries, deep
in the African bush, bringing much-needed medical attention to some very remote
villages. One night, while the entire village was gathered around a huge
bonfire, one of the children of the missionary family, a boy of about eight
years, tripped and fell head first into the fire. The boy’s father reached into
the conflagration and pulled his son out, severely injuring himself in the
process. But it was evident to all that the boy’s injuries were
life-threatening. The family piled into an old Land Rover, and drove four hours
across rutted dirt tracks to the nearest town that had an actual hospital.
No doctor in residence at that clinic could have saved that boy’s life.
But it just so happened that another group of American doctors was at that
particular clinic, at that particular time. And one of them just happened to be
the head physician of the Burn Unit at Parkland Hospital, in Dallas. The doctor
immediately commandeered a private jet, and flew the boy and his family back to
Dallas that night. The trip was excruciating for all, but particularly the boy,
who had suffered second and third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body.
After days of treatment, and taking great care to avoid infections, the
boy was finally able to communicate with his family. They were looking for
anything to take his mind off the pain, and they asked him if he’d like to
watch TV. And he said he’d like to watch Wishbone.
Evidently he was a huge fan of the show. So much so that the friends of
this family would tape episodes in the states, then mail them to the missionaries in Africa. But they had literally
left all their belongings on another continent, flying home with their injured
son with only the clothes on their backs. The director of Parkland Hospital
heard about it, and he made a call to Lyrick Studios, and they made a call to
me.
The folks at Lyrick, to their everlasting credit and compassion, had
created a gigantic gift basket for
the boy. It contained every episode of the show that was currently available on
video, several plush toys, custom book markers, advance copies of several of
the new Adventures of Wishbone books
for young readers, and various other little Wishbone
toys and keepsakes. They wanted me to
deliver the basket.
I wish I could tell you I jumped at the opportunity. The truth is, I
balked. I was scared shitless, actually. How would I react when I saw this kid?
What if I freaked out? What if I did what I very often do in weird or awkward
or tragic situations, and said or did something incredibly stupid or insensitive,
and made it worse? Truth to tell,
folks, I almost said no.
But then the little voice started talking, the one that usually talks to
me after I’ve fucked something
completely up. This isn’t about you,
asshole. Here’s a thought: why don’t you grow a pair of balls, and take a gift
basket to a kid who could really use a pick-me-up right about now? You don’t
have to be “on,” and you don’t even have to be comfortable. You’re not going to
save his life, but you might just make him forget for a few minutes how much
his life sucks right now. So man up, funny boy. (And yes. That’s how the
little voice talks to me. Not like Yoda, or Mister Miyagi, or any wise old
sage. Just a slightly smart-assier version of me.)
If you’ve never been to Parkland Hospital, it’s easy to get lost. And I
did. Twice. Fortunately a very nice receptionist walked me up to the Burn Unit,
through a maze of corridors so bewildering, I was already planning on living at
Parkland, seeing as how I’d never find my way out. We arrived at the proper
room, and I guess I thought there’d be a suit or two from the Lyrick PR
department to greet me. But there wasn’t. I knocked, and a very petite,
weary-looking woman opened the door.
“Hello. I’m Larry Brantley. I work
on the television show Wishbone, and
I was wondering if I could say hi to Marcus.” (Not his real name.) The
weary-looking woman (Marcus’ mom) smiled. They were expecting me. Everybody,
that is, except Marcus. His mom walked ahead of me, towards the bed in the
center of the room. Marcus was awake, and she quietly informed him he had a
visitor. Then she stepped to the side. Seeing that kid for the first time and not losing my shit right there and then
was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’m fucking crying right now at
the memory of it.
His face was, miraculously, unharmed. But from the throat down he was
completely covered in bandages. And he was in such obvious pain. My heart broke
- fucking shattered - for this kid. In that moment, all I wanted was to punch
the throat of God himself, so great was my sense of injustice for this little
boy. Instead, I said, “Hey, Marcus. I’m
Larry. I brought something for you.” I held up the basket so he could see
it. I won’t tell you that his eyes lit up like it was Christmas, and he’d just
gotten that Red Ryder BB Gun he’d been begging Santa for. The truth is, Marcus
was heavily sedated to ward off the unimaginable pain that accompanies severe
burns. But he recognized it as a gift, and what I saw in his eyes was
gratitude.
My plan had been to simply drop off the basket, tell Marcus I hoped he’d
start to feel better, and make a hasty exit. But then his mom pulled up a chair
for me, so I sat down beside him. And that was when I realized that the TV was
on in his room. And he was watching my
show. I can’t remember exactly which episode it was (it might have been Robin Hood, possibly Ivanhoe), and it occurred to me that
Marcus had no idea who I was. He only knew I was some guy who worked on his
favorite show, who had brought him a gift basket. The remote was on his bed, so
I picked it up and muted the volume. Without looking at Marcus – and while he
was still looking at the screen – I Flipped The Switch in my head, and began
doing a running commentary on the episode – as
Wishbone.
Until that moment, I don’t think most of the people in his room knew
who I was. The looks of utter shock were priceless. But the coolest part of all
of it was that, the whole time I was talking about the show in Wishbone’s voice, Marcus never looked at
me. He continued to watch the screen, and a big, goofy smile started to walk
across his face. When that happened, I saw his mom put her face in her hands. I
knew she was crying. Turns out that had been the first smile Marcus could
muster since the terrible events of days before. It was so cool, the way you
could tell that he didn’t want to break the spell by looking at me. So we both
watched the TV, and I continued Wishbone’s
live commentary, talking about how we pulled off a certain shot, or how
many times that particular take got busted because somebody laughed, or farted,
and other behind-the-scenes nuggets – all in the voice of his favorite TV
character.
When the episode ended, I finally looked back around at him. In my own
voice I said, “Pretty cool, huh?” He
nodded, but even as he did I could see the smile leaving him. The illusion was
gone; the reality of his situation was crawling back over him. And in that
moment I remembered Tony Fucking Vilardi, the one kid in junior high school who
hadn’t been afraid to say the honest thing to me, when he’d heard my dad had
killed himself.
I looked Marcus square in the eye and, with tears in my own, said, “I know, man. It sucks. It really sucks.
Keep fighting though, okay? Keep fighting even though it sucks, because
eventually it won’t suck anymore.” That was it. That was all I had. It had
sounded lame as shit to my ears, but it was the most honest thing I could say. The
last thing that happened that afternoon was that his family requested some
photo-ops. I had to be very careful leaning into the shot with him, because
protocol dictated that I couldn’t breathe
on this kid, let alone touch him. But we got some satisfactory pictures, and I
bid Marcus and his family goodbye, making promises to stay in touch, which of
course I never did. I held it together long enough to make a dignified exit
from his room, and then I hauled ass out of the Burn Unit, out of Parkland
Hospital, where I jumped in my car and fell the fuck apart for the better part
of an hour. When I finally decided I was okay enough to drive, I made the 45
minute commute back to my house, totally ignored my wife’s questions about how
it went, and proceeded to get knee-walking drunk. The last coherent thought I
had that day was really just a dirty, selfish little prayer: Please, God. Please don’t ever make me have
to do that again.
But it all comes around, remember?
Flash forward ten years. 2007. I was in my “Jesus Is My Homeboy” phase,
and my family and I were part of a very large church in North Texas, where I
was known, not as the Wishbone guy,
but rather as the guy who appeared on stage in any humorous sketch that was a
part of that week’s sermon. One Sunday after the last service, while everybody
was milling around in the “worship center” (when you’re non-denominational and
hip, you have a worship center, not a chapel), my friend Scott, the Worship
Arts Pastor (aka the guy who chose the songs each week) came up to me, and
began to tell me a story about going to a “Meet The Teacher” night at his
daughter’s elementary school the previous week. In the classroom of his
daughter’s reading teacher, he noticed something of a relic on top of the
bookshelves: an old Wishbone plush
doll, in his Romeo and Juliet costume.
Scott, clearly in an effort to look like a badass in front of his kid, remarked
to the teacher that he just so happened to be friends with the guy who provided
the voice of Wishbone on the
television series. And that was when, according to Scott, the teacher got very
still, and very quiet, and he saw tears welling up in her eyes. And she
proceeded to tell him a story: that ten years ago, she and her family had been
missionaries in Africa. That her son had been terribly burned in an accident.
And, while lying in the Burn Unit at Parkland, awaiting what would be a series
of painful reconstructive surgeries, he had been paid a visit by a guy in a
flannel shirt and a baseball cap, with a giant gift basket and a familiar
voice.
As Scott was recounting this tale, he reached in his jacket pocket and
withdrew an envelope with my name on it. The envelope contained a letter,
written by Marcus’s mom (the teacher), and two photographs. I will not reprint
that letter here. Those words of appreciation are between me, and the family of
a boy I was fortunate enough to make smile, during the worst moments of his
young life. The first photograph I remembered well: a slightly askew picture of
Marcus and me, I with my perpetual dopey grin, him with just a slight smile
only around the eyes. But it was the second photograph that drove me to my
knees. It was a picture of a seventeen year-old Marcus, in full marching band
regalia, blowing on a trumpet like he was Dizzy Fuckin’ Gillespie. He had the
special gloves on to protect his still-growing new skin. But he was in the
fucking marching band, man. And he
was killing it. It had sucked, and he had kept fighting. There were words
written on the back of the pic that said, simply, “Thank you, Mr. Brantley!”
And
with that, it came back around.
Here Endith The Shit
The author, and the young lady to whom this book is dedicated. Love you, Boo Bear.
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