Dear Mr. Bill Cosby . . .

Anyone who knows anything about Bill Cosby knows that he is a funny man.  Most people know that he is also a family man.  Way back before the “The Cosby Show” made him a weekly presence in households across America, he used elements of his family life in his stand up routines to great comedic effect.  Listening to these routines was a regular occurrence in my home while I was growing up (I learned the word “conniption” from Bill Cosby and it is a word that I have used often in my lifetime.) and I thought they were funny because I couldn’t imagine any child ever being as completely idiotic as he made his out to be.  Fast forward twenty years and I still listen to those routines but now I realize that they are funny because he was right.  Bill Cosby was right about everything.  If you throw in the nightly sniff check to make sure they did in fact use soap, “The Same Thing Happens Every Night” is pretty much a documentary of what evenings are like at my house.  I kid you not.  Well, maybe not the beatings, but the rest is pretty accurate.  In spite of how smart my children are, there are moments when I really have to stop and call them idiot children under my breath.

Today I got to use one of Bill Cosby’s great lines in my real life during an actual conversation with one of my children.  When Kev got home from work, he noticed that Nathan’s hair was looking weird.  I had not noticed this because Nathan is getting tall enough that unless I am standing right by him and intentionally looking right at the top of his head, I have a tendency to get more of a side view of his hair.  Kev looked closer and realized that there was a spot right up on the top in the middle where the hair was much shorter than the hair on the rest of his head.  The conversation that followed went something like this:

Kevin: “When did you cut your hair?”

Nathan: “I don’t know.”

Kevin: “No, really.  When did you cut your hair?”

Nathan: “I don’t know.”

At this point, I just could not resist and threw in a Cosby-ism:

Me: “Was your head with you all day today?”

Kev and I both snickered.  Nathan, not so much.  After a few more minutes of questioning we got him to admit that last week he was scratching his head while holding a pair of scissors.  We spent five more minutes asking why in the world he was scratching his head while holding a pair of scissors in the same hand.  His response, of course, “I don’t know.”  After that we just gave it up and figured his next haircut will be a buzz to even everything out.

So if you’ve never had the pleasure of hearing Bill Cosby’s take on life with children, take a few minutes to listen.  I promise you it will be time well spent.  And you just might pick up a line or two to use with your own offspring.

"The Same Thing Happens Every Night"
"Kill the Boy"