Mondays with George « The Blog for the Sports Gamer

23Jun/080

Mondays with George

I think it will come as a surpise to a lot of you, but I had a relatively normal childhood even though I thought it was a bit odd at the time.

My mother got custody of my two sisters and myself when I was around five after her divorce was finalized. My mother worked her butt off for most of my childhood and as a result of that, I spent a good deal of time with my sisters watching me. Having only one parent seemed like an odd thing to me, as most of the kids I knew had both a mom and a dad around, but now I know that my mom was just one of many women raising kids all by herself.

I didn't really enjoy spending a lot of time with my sisters as they were older than me and they were, well... girls. So, I would spend a lot of time in the house playing with Legos, Star Wars toys, and listening to comedy albums. I've never really asked my mom why she had all of the comedy albums that she did, but I spent a great deal of the developmental years of my life listening to comedy albums on our vinyl player.

My mother had quite a diverse range of comedy selections, from Woody Allen to Bill Cosby to George Carlin.

The trick about listening to George Carlin albums when you're 7 or 8 years old is to not let your mother know that you're doing it. This proved to be quite a challenge as 'Class Clown' was hidden from me quite a few times, but I always managed to find it and listen to it over and over again.

By the time I was 9, I was reciting the 'seven words you can't say on television' to my friends.

Each person has their own set of people that they believe greatly influenced them. In my case George Carlin was one of those people and I never even met him.

While I didn't enjoy his later life work as much as the earlier works, I still respected him as the comedy genius that he was.

Tonight I'll sit back and listen to my CD for Class Clown and remember how big of a role George played in developing my sense of humor.

Goodbye, George.