I try to be a hard boiled sometimes. My kids see right through it. I'm acting. It's always, 'When I say you'll be back at 11, that means 11, not 11.15. Do you hear me!?' Then, 'Yeah, Dad.'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My nieces and my nephews think the only thing that I do is 'Ice Age.' That's fine with me because pretty soon they'll grow up enough to realize that I suck or that my time has passed, whichever it might be.
At 3 years old, I was imitating and doing fun little commercials for the family. Then at 5, I knew, 'OK, this is something I really like.' At 8, I was crying in front of the mirror and my mom was like, 'Oh boy, here we go. We know what she's going to do.'
As a parent, I can get so frustrated. Any parent can!
Kids don't see me as an oldies person when I go out on stage. They see me as an energy force.
I come from a broken home. My parents split up when I was nine. Everyone gave me a good wallop. But I come from a time when you just put up with that, you got on with things rather than sitting moaning about them.
Sometimes kids used to give me a hard time. But they're on my side.
The subtle generational cues that make one thing cool and another uncool aren't always obvious to a parent. My children are my dinner-table sounding board. I've come up with some wonderful ideas that they universally dismissed as 'lame.'
At 13 years old, I was doing grown-man things, so I know who I am, and I'm telling people who I am.
I've been able to play a kid up to this point and pretend that I'm not a grown-up - well, at least for two hours a night!
When I'm around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you're supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.