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I collapsed on the couch and did something I rarely do during Clara Jane's naptime: I laid down and watched TV. Scrolling through our 3,849 channels, I landed on an old favorite I haven't seen in about a million years: Bill Cosby: Himself. It was just starting, so I hit the record button for future viewings. When I was 11 years old, I recorded the same movie on HBO and watched it until the tape disintegrated.

I consider those 11-year-old viewings of this movie as the true beginning of the development of my sense of humor. In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that, between Himself and Saturday Night Live, the idea was planted in my head that perhaps I could write funny stuff and be funny when I grew up. Being funny became an objective and a goal in my life that has never gone away.

Back then, I loved the movie because the humor was so absurd. Like this bit about getting drunk:

Now you've got to go. So you come into the bathroom, close the door; now, don't forget: you owe this to yourself. You've worked hard all week. It's come to this: [Kneels beside the chair and pretends to lift the lid on the john, then starts moaning]"Ahh, Jesus... Oh, God... If You get me out of this, I'll never drink again as long as I live..." [groans again] Now you are ready to put your face in a place that was never built for your face.

It's funny because it's silly! No way would anyone do that!

Actually, it turns out, people really do do that! It wasn't funny because it was absurd, as I thought when I was 11. It was funny because it was true!

Of course, the bulk of Himself is the material about his family, which morphed into the basis of the not-nearly-as-funny Cosby Show a few years later. In the movie Cosby paints a picture of a family overrun with wild kids. Dad's just trying to lay low and not deal with the chaos around him, while Mom's always about two inches away from a violent mental breakdown. Of course that was absurd! I mean, I had seen my mom get mad, but I never saw her head split open with flames shooting out of her skull as Cosby describes his wife upon her discovery that he's fed the kids choclate cake for breakfast.

C'mon, you know you want to sing the chocolate cake song with me. I've been singing it for the past 24 hours. Dee dee boom dee dee boom ... Dad is great! Gives us the chocolate cake!

Absurd! Crazy! Absurd and crazy are funny!

I've always heard about people having a conniption but I've never seen one. You don't want to see 'em. My wife's face split. My wife's face split and the skin and hair split and came off of her face so that there was nothing except a skull. And orange lights came out of her hair and there was glitter all around. And fire shot from her eye sockets and began to burn my stomach and she said, "WHERE DID THEY GET CHOCOLATE CAKE FROM?"

Wait ... that's not absurd! That's the motherfucking goddamn truth! And I swear to God, when I was picking up bruised strawberries, covered with road grime in my driveway with my bloody finger-stump, I felt it. I felt the skin and hair seperating from my skull. I felt it, I'm telling you! I felt the flames. And two hours later, when I saw this scene in the movie, I laughed until I cried. Or maybe I cried first, and then laughed. Or maybe I had gone so stupid and crazy from parenthood that I did both at the same time. I don't know. I just know that I so clearly saw myself in something that, 22 years ago, I saw as being completely foreign and exaggerated.

By the time I got to the climactic scene, where the children are fooling around instead of going to bed, and his wife whips around with a yard stick, "like a samuri warrior and says, 'I have had! Enough of this!'" I was curled into the fetal position, trembling from the laughing and sobbing.

Not that I would ever take a yardstick to my kid, but damn. I get it now. I so get it. I get that until you're a parent, it's funny because it's so exaggerated. But once you become a parent, it's funny because it cuts right to the bone and touches a raw spot. You've got to laugh because it's the only sane option. In the driveway hours before, I would have loved nothing more than to turn into Samuri Mom, so intense was my anger, frustration, and exhaustion. But all I can do is laugh at the idiot who stood among the strawberries, screaming garbled nonsense because it wouldn't be right to stand in the driveway and scream obscenities with my kid, mesmerized by the gas cap, standing right there.

When you're a father you censor yourself. You get just as angry with a child but you don't want to say, "What the filth and foul and I'll filth and foul, filth and foul and, yeah, ya filth and foul face, and I'll filth and foul, foul, filth!" You don't want to say that to a child so you censor yourself and you sound like an idiot.

I'd like to know how my parents controlled the urge to chuck the remote control at my head the many times we watched that movie together when I was a kid.

Speaking of which, my parents will be arriving any minute now.

My parents never smiled... because I had brain damage. My wife and I don't smile because our children are LOADED with it. Oh, my parents smile now, whenever they come over to the house and see how much trouble I'm having. Oh, they have a ball! "Havin' a li'l trouble, huh, son?"

Oh, my mom laughed last night when I told her about our little driveway fiasco. And I can guarantee that when she talks to Clara Jane later today, she'll take the kid's side.

I tell my kids, "This is not the same person I grew up with. You are looking at an old woman who is trying to get into Heaven."