Phil Donahue Was My Dad

 Phil Donahue was my dad.

And we didn’t have Public Children’s Service Agencies (PCSAs) back in the old days.

The government wasn’t on your phone

You actually had to call the Production Assistant in Chicago

(Her name was Margo)

Get really close to that round microphone for the phone

Stretch out the twirly cord like it's a murder weapon…

“Hello, Margo?”

You had to use a deep voice because Margo knew some regulations about Child Entrapment.

“Margo… you gotta help. I’m telling you.”

She is paid to listen. Margo is PAID to listen and grab moving stories for Americans to watch on their television.

We fly out to Chicago a week later. I finally got Margo on my side and the whole world is gonna hear how Phil Donahue treats his only son. Dad is sitting next to me on the Pan-Am flight. He makes us take second or third class and the take-off feels like birthing pains. I don’t tell him that because he would want to discuss male birthing pains for a while.

The man holds a book in his lap and usually can get away with privacy because his suits are boring like Seattle clouds. Always gray and ready to mug, muggle or just be muggy. Also, he resembles many people from the old world of pontic giants. He is just one of those guys on a mayor poster that no one can remember. Please don’t ever give him a mic.

“Peanuts?”

The stewardess is holding a bag of hot peanuts with a thong. At least I try to use Superman's X-ray vision to see if she has a thong. The peanuts look like they’ve been in a Japanese bath; they sweat and beg for someone to take them away from the airline captivity. Dad is reading The _Fall of Western Civilization_ for the third time because he secretly wants to be a deist but sells the world that we must all come together for common civic behavior.

I snatch the peanuts with my greedy hands and the stewardess waits for the man to smack my fingers with a spoon. Dad doesn’t use a spoon. He doesn’t believe that a little jolt of education is going to be memorable. Pop is in love with the Konsai Methodology of Early Adolescents. Basically, I can shoot the President and we are just going to have to talk about how it made me feel.

“Sir?”

He smiles. The eyebrows are a thick Scottish bush that have turned white from his blond days. Dad was never “blond” in the natural sense but we believe that there was some viking intervention in the 13th century and it is given to each man to prepare for his own male pattern baldness.

He shakes his head, “No.”

You’re not going to hear him give out free words on the plane, to the taxi man (he gives a business card with an address) or even much of a greeting to the doorman at 630 N McClurg Court. This is the studio where Kennedy shamed and shut down Nixon. A CBS affiliate because Ohio was getting small. Someone got father to get contractually paid on each word that he uses so he is very frugal in real life and saves up all his speeches for the camera.

Margo is very excited. She looks at us. It is going to be a television daytime talk show first.

Pop is on his own. Margo is not allowed to fumble with his tie anymore or give him extra slacks if there was a spill on the plane. The man loves Sanka Coffee and the turbulence can do many things. Instead of taking her boss to the groping stations she looks at me…

Tommy?

I was named after my mom (Marlo Thomas) for obvious reasons.

I blink. Trying to mimic Dad. It’s going to be really funny if we get a pre-measured audience, people who can laugh on que card command and nothing much happens because we are both trained in the art of Responsive Therapy. It’s like a kendo tournament where you have to use the other person’s energy against them. In kendo, a referee will tell one of the participants to make an opening move.

In kendo.

In American fighting, the offended party is expected to choose weapons for a dual. Perhaps it is an English custom. I am told that we drive on the right side of the road due to the preponderance of Coach Robbers in the early days and the need to fire a gun with a right hand.

“Tommy?”

Yes. I am ready in my little tailored suit. It is a mom design with elephants. Mom has another suit ready if I should win a spelling bee or have to go to a funeral. They don’t take me to church. So on Dad’s nationally televised talk show she has sent me across the country with pink elephants. Some are on circus balls and others are simply waiting like Dumbo for their mother to caress their trunk with her trunk. The background color of the suit is white and striped. It’s like a confused gangster made a child sized suit and came to Chicago to wow the universe.

I nod. Like dad.

I am ready.

Mr. Camisole has to introduce the guest today because Dad is playing his own guest. He’s gonna start by standing and have a long corded microphone out in the audience. He assumes they have been watching so long they will know what to ask as they interview the father in this situation.

Many times Dad has victims of child trafficking. He might have a repented police officer, a mayor who wants to change political parties. All of his shows become town hall meetings of showing our clutter to others. It’s for public good and science.

I get to hold a microphone. I wish I had a glitter glove like Michael Jackson. My moonwalking skills are terrible.

There is no reason to lean into the microphone and give the ladies some of my beatbox skills. I can also imitate the voice of Yoda or try a nasally version of Donald Duck if there is enough water present. Margo has my microphone to silence by unplugging the other end of the cord. People don’t need to see her cut the umbilical cord. I understand that Wilma Mankiller became the first lady chief of the Cherokee because she didn’t give up her microphone.

Motown would have called me a prop.

:::::: Today on the Phil Donahue Show : Is your child out of control? ::::::1 Timothy 3:4-5:::

Most Americans in those days were given a child rearing book by Dr. Spock, a Gideon Bible and a free circumcision by the hospital. We had about 90 perfectage (sic) of American families take the circumcision because it was free. Around half of those kept their bibles from the business club called “Gideons” and a few more were talking about the therapies of Doctor Spock. Also, seatbelts were not required back then. You could throw your baby from the car going home if the Gideons, the Spocks , or the circumcision went wrong.

I get up to the center of the stage in my pink elephant suit and take a bow. The first two rows of the crowd are in spitting distance. I do not spit.

Mr. Camisole introduces me as Little Thomas Goround. It is important that one of your parents give you a name because the hospitals really give a great amount of pressure for a name by use of the gift bag (Spock/Gideon/Circumcision). Sometimes they put a free Snickers candy-bar at the bottom of the bag to see if the child will latch on to the teat or the arms of Mars. I’m not saying that people only take circumcision for the candy but when your getting close to 90 percent attrition on a 4,000 year old ritual… kinda wonder if there was coaxing involved.

Mr. Camisole: “Tommy? Tell us your story.”

Dad is sitting on the chair. He looks blankly at the audience as if he is gonna savor every word.

Yes.

I feel untamed.

I walk over to Dad. Lean down and so he should lean forward. Doctor Spock wants hugs to last for 14 seconds. This releases happy thoughts that he calls endorphins.

The Gideons say we should love our neighbor and stone our children. They type this out in gold leaf on the cover.

Dad doesn’t come up to join a hug. In fact I see by the creases of his lips that he is very unhappy that I am 1.) blocking the camera 2.) putting my buttocks on national television. Well I am perfectly dressed in a suit, Dad!

I kick the man in the shin. I kick him hard.

He bites his knuckle that has lost all the blood. It’s a white knuckle. I’m watching him bite that knuckle with so much gusto that the heart is not even going to keep sending it blood. Lilly skin Americans should not bite their knuckles with the whole of their mouth on national television because they want to show the world that they are in control with words. The Japanese were wrong.

Man that’s gotta hurt.

I didn’t care because DAd wouldn’t let me go over to a little girl’s house because her parents were gone. I told that girl I would be there! John Wayne would have slapped my dad for making me a liar. I’m not a liar DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The first two rows of the audience are probably remembering that the modus operandi of some local Mafia and the newly created PETA network was acid. I take the glass picture of liquid (water) and throw it on the first two rows of the audience. No one is going to get a free car until the days of Oprah. No one is gonna sit there and watch Reagan get shot again if I keep moving around on the sound stage. You have to be really enlarging your body, like stepping up to a bear, claw at the vermillion curtains and try to climb and shred them like a cat. If all goes well, the Emergency Broadcasting Network will stop all televisions in the United States so Phil Donahue can deal with his kid.

They don’t.

Even when I take out a Zippo Lighter from Pennsylvania, stamped out by people who overcome the wind, sold to my uncle Harry who has a Honda Rebel because he can’t afford a Harley Davison. He leaves it next to his pile of weed and I bring this to Chicago to see if we can get a second burn.

Some say the way Chicago pizza crusts puffs up while New York styles pizza crust looks like a communion wafer is all about the chad and the fire. That the General Mills once burned from flour powder dust. That Chicago was raised building by building to put in a sewer and the lack of chamberpots couldn't put out the 1871 fire. But the pizza crust had risen. Just like the Gideon Christ.

_Elohim_.

Nesbit.

When the flames got going pretty good I knew these curtains weren’t asbestos. Can’t really tell on the old theaters but this one had been recently designed to look good on television. Most people could only afford black and white t.v. sets back then. Stanley Kubrick won an Academy Award for filming candle light in a movie. It used to be a large technical undertaking. I wondered how bright we would all look by the flames.

“Get ready DAD! I’m bringing the fires of hell because you don’t believe in it.”

That was a lot of unscripted words, I know. But i had to yell because Margo gave me a fat boy microphone and I think it was still unplugged. Hopefully someone would have the good manners to boost my father’s mic because he was standing. Trying to suppress his rage. Pointing at this and that. Locking the television audience in the studio by use of a deadbolt door. Did you know it has been illegal to scream FIRE in America since the early 1800s? Freedom of Speech and Child Rearing only goes so far.

Everyone was out of their seats with the flame. Short people couldn’t even see my dad because the average heighth was 5’9"back then. After WW2 they thought it was bad nutrition that kept kids from growing like bean poles, like vikings. They tried to fortify our cereals and wouldn’t give welfare payments to any food that wasn’t considered healthy for height. Riboflavin.

Dad is using that long finger to order me down. He won’t yell on national television. There is no extra money in the contract for raising his volume. I’m up there all monkeyed-up and hating that the sports coat is non flexible and starchy. The stage monkeys have set up a nice scaffolding about twenty feet off the floor and painted it black. People have always played with acoustics, egg cartons and geometries but I think the Greeks had it right. Maybe even the Hollywood Bowl had it right. Chicago doesn’t have it right because you can be all the way at the top of a curtain, trying to run away form a growing flame and not quite sure if anyone can hear you ask for forgiveness.

Nevermind.

I wanted to rage.

There is so much undigested rage that builds up that a proctologist and his magic wands couldn’t get you right. “Burt” the lovable chimney sweep from Mary Poppins couldn’t get you right. Sure they might send The Smurfs over to sing a little song and Pappa has the village chop down a tree to bore out the bad Gargamel feelings. But the unrest is still there.

A meal waits on the floor.

I see Margo with a fire suppressant canister. She screaming for protocols. "Call the fire department or move to commercial!"

Dad’s over six feet tall because his parents used to stretch him out at night. They worried about polio and literally had this stretching device on his steel meshed bed. Kids grow mostly at night.

He commands Margo to not stop taping. To not call a third party. This is a local matter and the flames really aren’t enough to grow pizza crust. The curtains are a mix of Rayon (which just shrivels and smells like burnt meat) and some cotton and starchy fabric that doesn’t like irons or flames. It’s kinda burning itself out and I need to find another source of flame if this parties gonna last.

John Wayne.

I take a guy wire and slide down to the far end of “stage left”. Sliding down really does a number on the hands. The ninjas were wrong. I land over by one of the side entrances and the people of the audience have already taken off their belts, _en medias regas_ . They are prepared to take over the place of the parent because the law states that each citizen must account for the juvenile disobedience if it happens in front of their face. This finally became the Princess Diane law a decade later. But at that moment we had just two hundred pissed off parents and a Talk Show Dad who wanted to show the value of talking it out.

Farg and Fuck ! I really wanted to ignite that man.

I jumped up quick to kiss a lady in a moo-moo shirt. This immobilized her for a moment but the old man next to her had a hell of a buckle attached to his belt. He was swinging it wildly in my direction, kinda like a lasso to catch this or that.

“Ha!”

He missed.

I ran up to the stage because Dad always had one of those soft belts. One of those soft hands. One of those soft voices. Annoyingly righteous like … like gravity had a mouth.

I didn’t hide behind the man but went right up to the virgin shin and kicked him again. Mom made me wear the hard leather wingtip shoes that were perfectly girly for sliding on floors. You couldn’t do any real man work in a pink elephant suit or wing tips but you certainly could klomp a fella who was mostly shin.

Then he cried out.

Dad hopped around on one leg and held the other. Old football injury? Nah.

I recall something about having to move mom’s heirloom buffet to the second floor and Dad sucked up the feeling of two hundred pounds coming down on his shin not too long back. We could've hired the movers but he said we boys might move it to work like men. That was a good day.

I felt nothing but the wild hypnotism of watching my father suffer. He was jumping around and yet still looked like an elephant on a ball. Just like my suit. How could anyone hop around that stiff?

Margo grabbed me then. She had my hands from the back because I was going to really pace that scene out. To think about if John Wayne would even notice a kick to the shins. Everyone wants to talk these days.

They talk

They talk

They muse and are so very clever.

I tell you that I would be just another celebrity's kid on drugs and dead if Dad didn’t take me over the chair. He used his bare hand on national television and swatted that extra skin that the Gideons gave me to take a little rebuke.

He must have gotten in ten good swings, bangs coming down his face, the perspiration of a suit, the firemen finally busted the door. Margo was looking over the contract because the FCC was very clear about my naughty words and acts of familiarity on camera.

Dad blew his bangs out of his face and screamed kindly:

WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK

AFTER THESE IMPORTANT

MESSAGES