There’s a story that may be apocryphal, attributed to Mark Twain. He notes, when he was sixteen, how stupid his father was, but when he was twenty-one, he was amazed how smart his father had become in the ensuing five years.
What has occurred to me, as my twin boys move through Twain’s know-it-all years and head toward enlightenment, is that I think I have learned a great deal more from them than they ever learned from me.
(A scene from the original pilot script for the TV series, Dadoo later titled Something Wilder on NBC when Gene Wilder took the lead role.)
GENE’S HOME.
(Gene as “Dadoo” sits rocking his twin boys. “Dadoo” is the name the boys called me. It was the second word they spoke after “cat.” So from then on I was “Dadoo.” Still am. Gene, as “Dadoo” looks up at the camera.
DADOO
I’m just trying to get my boys to fall asleep. They woke me up, so until I get them back to sleep, I can’t sleep. (sighs) I’m exhausted. I’m not their grandfather. I’m their father. Y’see I got married when I was forty-nine. My wife and I had twin boys when I was fifty two. (rocks them) Why did I wait so long? I used to play a game when I rode the subway. I look across and see four or five women, sitting opposite me. I’d pretend that I had to choose one. For life. Once I rejected one, I couldn’t go back. If I kept rejecting then I’d have to choose the last one. Nine times out of ten I’d go all the way to the end, having rejected them all, and find that the last one was not nearly as attractive as the first. Or the third. It was my life in microcosm. Now, mind you, I did not choose women solely based on their looks. This was just a subway game. But in some way, I suppose, I had been playing it all my life. So you can imagine how lucky I feel that I finally chose someone terrific. Who then gave me twin boys. (he thinks) I mean, if I had married my high school sweetheart Judy Riffleman, my children would now be thirty and I’d be a grandfather … rocking to sleep a couple of two-year-olds. So big deal. Everything worked out perfectly. For me. I don’t know about Judy Riffleman.