Dave Barry: Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up

“It’s just one word,” the director said. “You say ‘Howdy.’”

“I’ll do it,” I said. A role like that comes along once in a lifetime.

The TV show—which might even still be on the air as you read this—is called “Dave’s World.” It’s loosely based on a book and some columns I wrote. I use the term “loosely” very loosely. There’s no way they could just take my columns and turn them directly into a TV series; every episode would last four minutes, and end with all the major characters being killed by an exploding toilet. So they have professional writers supplying dramatic elements that are missing from my writing, such as plots, characters, and jokes that do not involve the term “toad mucus.”

(Lest you think I have “sold out” as an artist, let me stress that I have retained total creative control over the show, in the sense that, when they send me a check, I can legally spend it however I want.)

I worked hard on “Howdy,” memorizing it in just days. Depending on the scene, I could deliver the line with various emotional subtexts, including happiness (“Howdy!”), sorrow (“Howdy!”), anger (“Howdy!”), and dental problems (“Hmpgh!”).

Then, just before I flew to Los Angeles for the filming, the director called to tell me that they had changed my role. In my new role, I played a man in an appliance store who tries to buy the last air conditioner but gets into a bidding war for it with characters who are based, loosely, on me and my wife, played by Harry Anderson and DeLane Matthews. (Harry Anderson plays me. Only taller.)

In my new role, I had to say 17 words, not ONE of which was “Howdy!” I was still memorizing my part when I got to the studio. It was swarming with people—camera people, light people, sound people, bagel people, cream-cheese people, people whose sole function—this is a coveted union job, passed down from father to son—is to go “SSHHH!” You, the actor, have to say your lines with all these people constantly staring at you, plus the director and the writers keep changing the script. The actors will do a scene, and the director will say, “OK, that was perfect, but this time, Bob, instead of saying ‘What’s for dinner?’ you say, ‘Wait a minute! Benzene is actually a hydrocarbon!’ And say it with a Norwegian accent. Also, we think maybe your character should have no arms.”

My lines didn’t change much, but as we got ready to film my scene, I was increasingly nervous. I was supposed to walk up to the appliance salesman and say: “I need an air conditioner.” I had gone over this many times, but as the director said “Action!” my brain—the brain is easily the least intelligent organ in the body—lost my lines, and began frantically rummaging around for them in my memory banks. You could actually see my skull bulging with effort as I walked onto the set, in front of four TV cameras, a vast technical crew, and a live Studio Audience, with no real idea what I was going to say to the appliance salesman (“I need a howdy”).

But somehow I remembered my lines. The director seemed satisfied with my performance, except for the last part, where Harry Anderson, outbidding me for the air conditioner, hands the salesman some takeout sushi and says, “We’ll throw in some squid,” and I become disgusted and say, “Yuppies.” (If you recognize this dialogue, it’s because it’s very similar to the appliance-buying scene in Hamlet.)

“That was perfect, Dave,” said the director. (This is what directors say when they think it sucked.) “But when you say ‘yuppies,’ make it smaller.”

So we redid the scene, and as we approached my last line, I was totally focused on doing a smaller “yuppies.” Then I noticed that (a) the other actors weren’t saying anything, and (b) everybody in the studio was staring at me, waiting. I had clearly messed up, but I had no idea how. This was a time to think fast, to improvise, to come up with a clever line that would save the scene. So here’s what I did: I fell down. (It’s a nervous habit I have. Ask my wife.)

When I got up, I explained that I’d been waiting for Harry to say the squid line.

“They took that out,” somebody said.

“They took out the squid?” I said. “The squid is gone?”

It turned out that everybody else knew this, including probably the Live Studio Audience. So we had to do that part again, with my brain feverishly repeating “No squid! Smaller yuppies!” (This would be a good slogan for a restaurant.)

That time we got through it, and my television career came to an end, and I went back to being, loosely, a newspaper columnist. I have not, however, ruled out the possibility of starring in a spinoff. I am thinking of a dramatic action series about a hero who, each week, tries to buy an air conditioner. I have a great line for ending this column, but I can’t remember what it is.

Now that my son has turned 13, I’m thinking about writing a self-help book for parents of teenagers. It would be a sensitive, insightful book that would explain the complex, emotionally charged relationship between the parent and the adolescent child. The title would be: I’m a jerk; You’re a jerk.

The underlying philosophy of this book would be that, contrary to what you hear from the “experts,” it’s a bad idea for parents and teenagers to attempt to communicate with each other, because there’s always the risk that one of you will actually find out what the other one is thinking.

For example, my son thinks it’s a fine idea to stay up until 3 A.m. on school nights reading what are called “suspense novels,” defined as “novels wherein the most positive thing that can happen to a character is that the Evil Ones will kill him before they eat his brain.” My son sees no connection between the fact that he stays up reading these books and the fact that he doesn’t feel like going to school the next day.

“Rob,” I tell him, as he is eating his breakfast in extreme slow motion with his eyes completely closed, so that he sometimes accidentally puts food into his ear, “I want you to go to sleep earlier.”

“DAD,” he says, using the tone of voice you might use when attempting to explain an abstract intellectual concept to an oyster, “you DON’T UNDERSTAND. I am NOT tired. I am ... PLOOS!” (sound of my son passing out facedown in his Cracklin’ Oat Bran).

Of course psychologists would tell us that falling asleep in cereal is normal for young teenagers, who need to become independent of their parents and make their own life decisions, which is fine, except that if my son made his own life decisions, his ideal daily schedule would be:

Midnight to 3 A.m.—Read suspense novels. 3 A.M. to 3 P.m.—Sleep. 3:15 P.m.—Order hearty, breakfast from Domino’s Pizza and put on loud hideous music recorded live in hell. 4 P.m. to midnight—Blow stuff up.

Unfortunately, this schedule would leave little room for, say, school, so we have to supply parental guidance (“If you don’t open this door RIGHT NOW I will BREAK IT DOWN and CHARGE IT TO YOUR ALLOWANCE”), the result being that our relationship with our son currently involves a certain amount Of conflict, in the same sense that the Pacific Ocean involves a certain amount of water.

At least he doesn’t wear giant pants. I keep seeing young teenage males wearing enormous pants; pants that two or three teenagers could occupy simultaneously and still have room in there for a picnic basket; pants that a clown would refuse to wear on the grounds that they were too undignified. The young men wear these pants really low, so that the waist is about knee level and the pants butt drags on the ground. You could not be an effective criminal wearing pants like these, because you’d be unable to flee on foot with any velocity.