Falcone Ben - Being a dad is weird: lessons in fatherhood from my family to yours

I WANT TO THANK Carrie Thornton for editing this book and helping me to structure my thoughts (so often they tend to run around on their own), as well as for being such a nice person.

To Carries right hand, Sean Newcott. Since Carrie is my right hand, and Sean is Carries right handthat makes Sean my third right hand. Which is cool.

Christian Donatelli, our manager and friend, who early on thought this book might actually be interesting or fun.

Simon Green, my agentfor helping me land on my feet with Carrie and HarperCollins.

The whole team at HarperCollins, for taking a chance on me and believing in the bookand all of their excellent hard work that followed.

Liz Cohen, for putting together the first version of the book that I gave to my folks as a gift for Christmas.

Divya DSouza for her relentless efforts proofreading, finding pictures, and coordinating elements of the book with my family, as well as good thoughts on improvements.

Melissa McCarthy, for being hot stuff and for writing the forward.

To the family friends, too numerous to mention, who made growing up in Carbondale in the Eighties such a special affair.

To my friends Steve and Lisa Mallory and the rest of the group now in Los AngelesI hope and believe that all of our kids will remember growing up in the 2010s as a special and happy affair.

BEN FALCONE is a film director, writer, and actor. He has appeared in the films Bridesmaids , Identity Thief , and The Heat , and co-starred in What to Expect When Youre Expecting and Enough Said . He wrote and directed the comedies Tammy, The Boss , and the upcoming Life of the Party. He is married to Melissa McCarthy and is the father of two daughters.

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or The Value of Adult Friendships for the Sanity of Parents and Children Alike

M Y DAD LIKES GOOD times. Good times are important to him. His idea of a good time is being over at a friends house, laughing and drinking with all of his other friends. He likes to sit around, listening to his friends tell stories and telling stories of his own. If someone has a new story worth telling, all the better. If not, someone will tell an old one and get laughs like it was the first time they told it. That seems the perfect recipe for a good time with friends, if you ask me.

I grew up in this series of my parents friends houses, in the Little Egypt section of Southern Illinois (why they named it that, I do not know). These houses were full of laughter and booze. I remember my childhood as being at someones house every weekend, sometimes on weeknights too, and being surrounded by loud and funny adults. For a quick review of the cast, we had Dan Seiters, who would write semi-erotic short stories and sign them Rosemary Finnegan because she was the only member of the group who thought the stories were a bit too lewd. Everyone laughed and told Dan to stop, as they simultaneously hoped to hell he never would. (He never will. My favorite story involves a female character who constantly is drawing rabbits on her boobs. I forget why. Maybe Ill ask Rosemary Finnegan.)

My parents met all of their friends while they were in graduate school in the English Department at Southern Illinois University. They met some of them at a great bar in Carbondale named The Pinch Penny Pub that was perfect for poor grad students. After a short, disastrous attempt at living in Texas, my parents put down roots in Carbondale, and most of their friends from grad school did the same. This group all led the simple yet fun lives of educated upper-middle-class people who lived in a liberal college town in a semirural conservative area of the state. In a land in which gun racks adorned the back of many a truck, these were the people who read The New Yorker , drove small Hondas, loved Greek food, and knew which bars had jazz bands on a Tuesday night.

They hung out together, partied together, saw movies together, and celebrated the birth of new kids in the group. When a family in the group had a new baby, they didnt disappear as parents today tend to; they simply kept going out with giant bags underneath their eyes and a tiny baby in tow. I admit that when the girls were first born, I disappeared for a while. Melissa and I didnt really see friends for a few months, but through grit, determination, and the desire to see the sky, we got back on track. But for my parents, there would be no hiding. The group was the social outlet that made the rest of life better. These people counted on each other for support, but mostly for fun.

My dad emerged as the de facto ringleader of this group and he revels in his role to this day. When he senses that the group needs to get together, he plans a party, which my mother then of course executes. When the party inevitably occurs, he will laugh loudly and often. If no one else has a joke, hell laugh at his own.

One time I distinctly remember was when we were over at our friends Kelly and Cheris house. Kelly, a big Chicagoan with a wonderful mustache (basically, he had the big, bushy king of all mustaches), worked for Budweiser and had a vending machine full of beer on his porch. It was a hot late-summer afternoon and we all sat on the porch as the adults drank beer and the kids drank soda. My father was wearing shorts but no underwear (he couldnt be bothered with underwear) and he was telling a very long story about growing up in Philadelphia. Cheri, a funny red-haired lady with a quick smile who married Kelly after they met working at The Pinch Penny, casually looked over at my dad and said, while he was mid-story, Hey Steve, your balls out. Dan Seiters, the wonderfully weird gray-haired writer whose greatest claim to fame was that he could balance a fifty-pound owl on his cock (Im not sure how he came upon that discovery. Some things are better left unanswered), immediately broke into hysterical laughter. Dan Finnegan, Rosemarys husband, a quiet, kind, and dry man, said, I just assumed that we were all supposed to have our balls outI was concerned that I was late to the party. Everyone kept laughing and piling on. Dan Seiterss wife, Judy, a gray-haired, unassuming woman who is quite surely the sharpest person Ive ever met, laughed so hard she snorted beer out of her nose.

My dad let them finish with a pious look on his face, and then quickly adjusted his shorts and resumed the story with not a word about the offending testicle. He wasnt one bit embarrassed, though he was perhaps a touch annoyed to have to restart his story at a crucial point. The mark of my fathers power is that though Id make fun of him about that moment later, I let him continue through his story that nightbecause he was really enjoying himself, and he just couldnt (and he really shouldnt ) be distracted by the fact that his testicle was out in the open for everyone on the porch to see. Perhaps at the time, he was a bit perturbed that his story got a few less laughs than his testicle did. But when his friends bring up the story today, which they still do, hes thrilled to be the center of a good story that gets a good laugh.