Still Foolin' 'Em (31 page)

You’ve got to enjoy being a grandparent. You have to embrace it and be happy, because it’s a sign from God that you have succeeded as a parent. Plus, your genetic line will continue and if you have a good estate planner, the kids will get your money and the government won’t.

If you are a grandparent, you have heard all the jokes: “The great thing about grandparenting is you can hand them back.” But to me, it’s no joke.

When Jenny first got pregnant, it was a humbling feeling. I was going to be something I wished my dad had had the chance to be. It’s at these milestone moments that I think about him most. When we heard the news, Janice and I just held each other for the longest time. We were starting a new phase of our lives. The girl in the bikini and the eighteen-year-old camp counselor who’d followed her down the beach in the summer of 1966 were going to be grandparents. As Jenny’s pregnancy developed and her belly blossomed, I kept whispering to it, “I’m waiting for you.” So one night I went home and wrote down all the things I was waiting to do, and it became the book
I Already Know I Love You.
Having a grandchild does start another clock ticking. It’s the how-old-will-I-be-when-they’re-ten-and-then-fifteen-and-twenty-one-and-when-they’re-married clock. I couldn’t help winding it up, but I don’t advise that you do. The numbers get very scary.

When I’m 152, the grandkids will be in their nineties!

Sitting in the waiting room at the hospital awaiting the delivery of my grandchildren was an intense experience. When Janice was delivering our daughters, I was worried, to be sure, but when it’s your daughter in there, you worry even more. No parent ever wants their child to suffer any pain. Each time my sons-in-law, Mike and Howie, have come out and announced who just exited our daughter and entered the world and that everything was fine, I felt a relief beyond compare. With all four babies, they chose not to learn the sex beforehand. I loved that. It’s one of life’s last great surprises.

The joy I had in raising my girls was one thing; seeing them raise their kids is another. Trying to remember what we did in certain situations is not possible. Jumping back into the world of the wee ones is not that easy. Being a grandfather to both sexes has taught me that girls are just different from boys. Not better or worse, mind you, but different. Granddads and grandsons are a great combination because they both think a fart is the funniest thing in the world, and the average grandfather produces more natural gas than the state of Oklahoma. If they’d allow fracking on lower intestines, the average grandpa could produce enough energy to light up Tulsa for a year.

My friends who have granddaughters agree: Don’t take everything little girls say to you personally, except for “I love you.” They just say whatever they’re feeling. When your granddaughters are sweet and loving, there’s nothing like it, though it probably means they want you to take them to American Girl—which, of course, you will do.

Today’s grandkids are intimidating because they are so smart. When we were younger, we looked at our grandparents like they were the Oracle of Delphi. They were fonts of wisdom: “Billy boy, every time God closes a door, he opens another—that’s when the Nazis can see who’s hiding in the house. Don’t trust anyone.” Nowadays, the kids are the brains and we’re the idiots. If fifty is the new forty, then three is the new fifteen. My grandson is three, and he has his own Twitter account. “Today I had Cheerios and skipped my nap. Then read Voltaire and shorted Facebook at $25 a share.” My seven-year-old granddaughter programmed my TiVo. My ten-year-old does the Sunday
Times
crossword puzzle. Seriously, each age is so different and special.

When they’re born, you can’t help but stare at them, because that’s all you can do. It’s a thrill, of course, but they’re basically stones. For the first six months, your interactions are restricted to changing diapers and praying for an occasional smile. When I would get one, I’d be elated: “She knows me!” Then the baby would fart and I’d realize it was just gas. Once they start sitting up and recognizing you, it’s very obvious what is about to happen. Your kids are going to ask for the grandkids to sleep over at your place. Personally, I love it when my kids look more tired than we do. Sweet revenge. Still, we always say yes.

The first sleepover is a delight for grandmothers and a challenge for grandfathers. The grandmothers can’t wait to watch the kids; we can’t wait to watch the game. But once they’re asleep in our house, life as we know it stops. We tiptoe around like we’re the Frank family and the Gestapo is downstairs. The baby monitor is in our room, and the unspoken rule is that when the kids go down, so do we. So at seven
P.M.
, I’m in bed waiting for the sandman to come. I can’t watch TV, because the noise may wake up the kids; I can’t listen to music with my iPod earbuds, because then I can’t hear the monitor; and I can’t have sex, because that could wake up Janice.

When they turn one, you can start talking to them. You’ll usually sound like a moron, but that won’t stop you. You’ll talk in that babyspeak that adults use on kids and people from other countries. I have spent entire weekends sounding like the strange guy who delivers for the florist. And once you’ve been doing it for forty-eight hours, it’s impossible to stop. One time we went to the movies after the kids had been with us for the weekend. I sounded a tad demented at the box office: “Can you pweeeze give me two old-people tickies for
Inglourious Basterds,
mister, pweeeeeze?”

At two, they start talking back to you. They learn how to say “NO.” It’s the “Terrible Twos.” Forget the fact that you’re in the middle of the Shitty Sixties and that no one else on earth talks to you this way and let it roll off your back. Save up your angst for when they’re teenagers. Just change their diaper and cut their meat. It’s the same thing they’ll do for you when you hit the Hateful Eighties.

Then they go to preschool and it seems that every three weeks or so there’s a show, which usually entails the kids standing together onstage and screaming a song or two. The moms are sighing and the grandmas crying and you’re thinking,
I’m gonna be late for my meeting.
Make sure you go to every one of these shows. Believe me, you don’t want one of your grandchildren asking you why you weren’t there.

For me, the next stage has been exciting because my grandkids are starting to understand what I do. The first movie of mine they saw was
Monsters, Inc.,
and for a while I was Grandpa Mike Wazowski. I spent a year and a half talking only like him. Then we’d be out together and someone would stop me for an autograph or to take a picture, and that confused them. But when some of my movies were aired on TV, they started to understand. We showed them
The Princess Bride,
and then I could only talk like Miracle Max for a few months. “Have fun storming the swing set” always got a big laugh. I did a sketch with Miley Cyrus in a special, and I brought them to meet her. “You have a cool grandpa,” she told them. That made me a big deal. They watched the Oscars the last time I hosted and saw billboards with my picture on them around L.A. When they came to the premiere of
Parental Guidance,
it was the first time they saw me in a movie as me, and of all things, I was playing a grandpa. People were taking pictures and everyone was making a big fuss. On the drive home, six-year-old Dylan asked Jenny, “Mommy, do people know Grandma is married to Billy Crystal?”

One of the biggest regrets in my life is the fact that I’m not going to be around them forever to enjoy moments like that. Even if everything goes perfectly well, I’ll only get so far with them. I know the world they’ll be living in will be amazing—after all, just think of the changes the baby boomer generation has seen, from two men landing on the moon to two men on top of a wedding cake. My mind conjures up what the world will be like for them in, say, 2048. It will be a world where America is finally debt-free. And that will be because some of our richest billionaires will finally do the right thing and pay our debt off. They’ll just divvy up the check like it’s women at lunch.

“Warren, I got defense; you paid for Social Security last time.”

“Bill, you had health care and we didn’t, so take that.”

“Who wants the CIA? It’s only twenty-eight billion.”

“What tip do you leave on sixteen trillion? The service was so-so.”

Thirty-five years from now, the world will be at peace mainly due to the leadership of our new pope, Sol the first. People everywhere will speak the same language, the language of the United States: Spanish. In 2048, the last person who still thought switching to the metric system was a good idea will die. We will make contact with aliens from a new solar system, and during their first visit, Donald Trump’s son will ask for their birth certificates. Most comforting, in 2048, the Yankees will win the Intergalactic World Series when seventy-eight-year-old Mariano Rivera records his five thousandth save.…

But in my real world, I adore my grandchildren. And I’m getting better in my role every day, so I thought I’d share some rules, some do’s and don’ts, about being a successful grandparent.

Learn from your own parenting mistakes. Don’t repeat with your grandkids what you did wrong with your own kids. It’s time to make all new mistakes. Grandpas sometimes get pushed aside when the baby is born. When the moms are nursing, there’s even less you can do. Guys, don’t stand back and let the women do all the work; get in there early and help out any way you can. Don’t hold the baby like it’s a football you’re running with. Cradle it gently but confidently. They hear your voice, they feel your tension, they get to know
your
smell. Try to be a part of it right from the start by improving your burping technique. Quick tip: Keep your head turned away from the baby, so it won’t smell your beer breath.

As they get around six and older, girls start acting out a little. The shows they watch on TV should be monitored, as some of the “tween” shows can cause some strange behavior. When I was a kid, Annette Funicello of
The Mickey Mouse Club
was kind of sexy, but no one walked around dressed like her—except for my friend Todd, and that got him suspended from school for a week. Today, these tween stars are provocative. Young girls want to be like the older girls, but their bodies don’t quite match what they’re trying to do. A six- or nine-year-old trying to bump and grind like a twenty-year-old can be challenging. Just smile and say, “Nice shoes.” It’s times like this when I feel I’m in the middle of a reality show:
Oh, That Stupid Grandpa.

Try not to overreact when they appear naked in front of you. I’m not sure little boys do this, as only my friends with granddaughters seem to be confronting this problem. For whatever reason, little girls will suddenly strip down, parade around, and flash everyone. You can’t get angry and say, “Put your clothes on
now
” or “What the hell are you doing?” You have to act like they
have
clothes on. You can say, “That’s not appropriate—we’re in a restaurant.” Getting naked spontaneously is perfectly normal, I’m told. Yeah, but if my uncle Louie did it, they’d put him in restraints.

It’s also hard to remain calm when they start talking about penises and vaginas. Usually it’s at the dinner table and they’re laughing hysterically. I’d love to join in and be the cool “Lenny Bruce” grandpa—“Dig, took a bath and the water was too hot; I think I blanched the bishop”—but I resist the temptation. When my friend’s granddaughter was four, she saw her dad get out of bed naked, and she said, “Daddy, you slept with your penis on.” Kids love to talk about poop, penises, and vaginas—oh, and death. Yup, that’s a big one, too. You have to check with your kids first about what they tell their children about dying and death and heaven. It all has to be a consistent message. “Grandpa says the maggots eat us!!!” is not something you want your darlings to announce. This is a big one. Kids get scared about dying. You have to present it in the right tone. When I was a kid, my grandfather told me, “You get stiff, they dress you up and put you in a box. Then they bury you in the ground—pass the cookies.” That was three years in therapy right there. Kids need to know it isn’t the end. They need to feel that heaven is a wonderful, beautiful place where we’ll all be together again. On second thought, I guess we all do.

Never threaten them with something you know you’re not going to do. Threats don’t work with little ones. Just look at the problems we have with the president of Iran. Don’t tell them you’re going to go away and never see them again. Don’t tell them you will take away their food if they don’t eat it. They know you won’t.

Don’t tell them the truth about what you did when you were their age. So how do you handle it when they ask you the hard questions about drugs or sex or alcohol or what life was like in the 1960s? You do the same thing with your grandkids that you did with their parents: you lie your ass off.

Never tell them how much money you’re leaving them in the will. That’s just an incentive for them to write the words
DO NOT RESUSCITATE
on your chest when you’re napping.

Don’t let your fears and worries become theirs. Never forget that you’re sixty-five and they’re five. Just because we are a bunch of Purell-addicted, rubbing-alcohol-cleaning germaphobes afraid to shake hands doesn’t mean our grandkids should be. Pass down money, not phobias. Oh yeah: little ones like to eat their boogers. Just a warning. When you see them do it, don’t scream, “Eeech, don’t eat that!” If they see that it bothers you, they’ll do it again and again; then when you want to go out for lunch, they’ll say, “I’m not hungry, I ate.”

Please don’t do what my grandma did to me when I had something on my face. Never take your napkin and put it in your mouth to get some saliva on it and then rub the “schmutz” off their cheek. Oh, the horror.

Do fun things with them. Take them on one-on-one trips. Let them get to know you in a different way.

Read to them. Show them the joy you can get from a great book. Act it out; make it so that storytime with Grandpa is a joy they will always remember. When they say they want Grandma to read to them instead, make it clear that you understand. Then quietly weep in the bathroom.