Tonight was the beginning of the end. My youngest son will graduate high school this spring. Time to acknowledge the truth and move on.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’m in a high-risk business, and I’ve stopped counting the many failures that far exceed my successes. I have squandered some opportunities, I’ve put myself in bad positions and on occasion I’ve asked myself to do things I’m probably not capable of doing.
I’m going to repeat those mistakes again, I’m afraid. It comes with my job. So be it.
But there is one thing I will never have to second-guess.
I went to the “spring pops concert” at Moorestown High School tonight. I don’t know how many concerts and football games and musicals and performances I’ve been to. This is a commitment I made a long time ago: if it comes down to something for my career versus something for my two sons, they win. It’s not a question. It has hurt me professionally, and I’ve been told over and over that if I were serious about what I do for a living, I’d put “everything” into it.
Clearly I am not.
I am serious about my wife and children. They are the priority. And for anyone who says, “Well, that’s your opinion. That was good for you, but it’s not good for everybody,” I don’t care. This is not an opinion. I know it’s politically incorrect, to state the obvious. It’s insulting to put the truth down in writing and then spam it out on the internet. “What about people’s feelings?”
Get over it.
I got married and it has been a struggle to pay the bills and work in obscurity and weigh my personal life against my job. I’ve given up a lot. My wife has made innumerable sacrifices for us. We’ve had to work together to solve issues.
My relatively modest professional successes are a combination of my work ethic and the help and guidance and the favor of so many people (some I’ll never know) that I’m humbled beyond belief.
I did this one thing, I made this one commitment, I took this one risk and I was right.
I watched my kid tonight, who has benefitted greatly from the life his mother and I worked for. He was, like many of the kids on stage, wonderful. It comes with the territory here. The parents are devoted to their children, and they have the means to get them whatever it takes to be really good at whatever they choose: sports, music, art, theater, math, science, whatever. It’s a public school, but of the 300 kids who graduate this spring at least two scored perfection on their SAT exams. Four or five will attend Ivy League schools. There are lots of devoted parents. There are lots of (sorry) stable marriages. Lots of women who, like my wife, live for their kids.
She was there – EVERY DAY – for the boys when they came home from school. She dedicated her life to their being at all the lessons and classes and practices and meetings. In turn I skipped auditions and callbacks and “once-in-a-lifetime” prospects so that I would be home for the big and the not-so-big events.
I’m not bragging. I did what any spouse is supposed to do.
So I watched him tonight, my youngest son who is a senior in high school: he’s confident but not cocky; talented but not a virtuoso; surrounded by a positive cocoon of parents and friends and neighbors and teachers and support.
The way it’s supposed to be.
Taylor Mason is a comedian, a musician, a ventriloquist, writer and gadget freak. He has headlined every major comedy club in the United States, and has played Carnegie Hall and The Sydney Opera House in Australia. He has been part of two Emmy-winning television programs, including his children’s TV show, “Taylor’s Attic.” He is featured in comedy DVDs “Thou Shalt Laugh,” “Thou Shalt Laugh 2” , “Thou Shalt Laugh 3,” and “Thou Shalt Laugh 4“ plus two episodes of the hit comedy series “Bananas.” Taylor works a mind-boggling 200 nights a year, in front of every kind of audience, and has managed to stay married for the past 22 years to his wife, Marsia. They have two teen-aged sons and live in New Jersey (the only state in America that uses air freshener … outdoors).
To book Taylor for your event contact visit The Grable Group or email [email protected]
