By Clint McElroy
HQ 72 | WINTER 2010
For years and years, I have been hearing people say, “Eventually, you become your parents.” I have always laughed this off. After all, I am this cool, hip guy with a contemporary attitude and adventurous soul. I mean, I watch HBO, for crying out loud. I play online video games! I wear T-shirts with rock bands on them!
But yesterday, something happened that shook me to my core, because it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt … I have become my mother.
My mom, Donna Gail Secrist McElroy, more or less raised my brother Mark and me singlehandedly. The fact that neither my brother nor I has done serious jail time is a testament to what a good job she did. She held full-time jobs and still came home and did all those “mom” things – like cooking, cleaning, driving to Cub Scout den meetings and cleaning up blood when her moron kid fell out of a kumquat tree and cut his head wide open on a rain gutter. (Don’t ask.)
So, she was a chef, maid, chauffer, trauma surgeon and many other occupations. But the gig she was best at? Cheerleader.
And it used to drive me crazy.
Hear me out. Don’t immediately assume I am an ungrateful swine. I am an ungrateful swine, but give yourself a little more time to reach the conclusion.
My first job in radio was working four hours a weekend, playing Sunday morning church tapes and doing two Sunday newscasts. My mother told me, “You have a wonderful radio voice; you’re better than that Casey Kasem fellow. You should be doing that countdown.”
No way. We’re talking about the man who made “long-distance dedication” a household phrase, and he was the voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo!
When I got my first morning show job and started doing comedy bits on the show, Mom told me, “You are so amazingly funny; you should go up to New York City and get on that Saturday Night Live show.”
Me? One of the Prime Time Players? That’s just crazy talk. Oh, I may be a Tim Kazurinsky or a Gary Kroeger, but even that is a stretch.
When the first comic book I wrote hit the newsstands, my mother told me, “You are such a tremendous comic book writer. You need to march right up there to that DC Comics and tell them they should let you write Superman.”
Are you kidding me? I couldn’t even set foot in the DC offices. But that’s because of an outstanding restraining order that came about when I went there thinking Lynda Carter walked around the offices in her Wonder Woman costume. (She doesn’t – something I learned the hard way.)
It made me nuts. My mother just didn’t understand that I would never be able to do those things. She was building me up to a level I couldn’t achieve!
Jump ahead a few decades to present time. My sons Justin, Travis and Griffin do a podcast called My Brother, My Brother and Me. They have been doing the podcast for about six months now, and it has become an Internet phenomenon. It is one of the most downloaded podcasts on iTunes and has been accessed hundreds of thousands of times.
Yesterday, in a conversation with Justin, I said these words, “You guys are the funniest thing on the Internet. You should turn this into a TV show or a movie. Maybe a series of books!”
What was that, Donna? I mean, Clint? I had become my mom.
But that’s when it hit me. All those crazy dreams Mom had suggested to me – Casey Kasem’s replacement, SNL superstar, Man of Steel scribe – were things I had secretly dreamed about. My mom had more faith in me than I did! She always had, and she always will. And you would not believe how much I love her for that.
I suppose it’s the circle of life. (Imagine me standing on a rocky cliff and holding a lion cub over my head as I say that.)
To be perfectly honest, I really haven’t completely become my mom. I’m not nearly that awesome yet.
And the adventure continues …
