The stay-at-home dad: How my kids knew Norm

“I have excellent cards.”

My kids say this every time they pick up their hand of playing cards in a game of Uno, Skip-Bo, Go Fish, etc. It doesn’t matter if they actually have excellent cards… They say it regardless.

My kids stole this bit from me… I always say “I have excellent cards,” when I’m dealt a hand of playing cards. Sometime later in the game, I’ll also utter the non-sequitur, “I have an excellent egg.” The kids copied the first part, but they still don’t understand the second.

I stole the “excellent” bit from a random episode of Norm Macdonald’s sitcom, “The Norm Show,” which ran on ABC from 1999-2001, shortly after his stint on “Saturday Night Live.” Like almost everything Norm Macdonald did, “The Norm Show” was criminally underseen at the time, and it’s still not an easy find on YouTube, at least compared to his more celebrated clips from “Conan,” “SNL” and “The Late Show with David Letterman.”

Norm Macdonald died recently after a private, almost-decade long bout with cancer. I don’t usually feel much about celebrity deaths, but Norm’s sudden departure rattled me. In my more impressionable years, I was something of a Norm acolyte. I videotaped every episode of his sitcom (and even abandoned an already minor social life for a year in high school when the show aired on Friday nights). I rewatched his best bits on “Weekend Update” and elsewhere, at a time when the internet was slow and video clips were harder to come by.

I watched so much Norm my friends told me I talked like him. I still slip into the cadence from time to time.

When I told my oldest daughter I was sad about some comedian dying, she didn’t really understand.

“Why do you care so much? It’s not like you knew him or even met him,” she said.

Technically, I did meet him (after a show in Spokane about a decade ago), but she was right. Explaining the loss of a virtual stranger can be tough. Rather than try to explain the origins of the “excellent cards” bit and how so much of the weirder things their dad says was regurgitated “Norm voice,” I tried another approach.

My daughter loves the “Dork Diaries” book series. She’s read them all multiple times and anxiously awaits every new installment.

I told her, “What if the author of ‘Dork Diaries’ died today, and that meant there would never be another ‘Dork Diaries’ book ever again?”

The color in her face vanished. “That would be TERRIBLE!”

I said, “That’s what it’s like for me with Norm Macdonald. I have the old stuff, but there won’t be anything else from him ever again.”

My kids have never seen any Norm Macdonald content (outside a couple of vocal performances in kid’s movies). Most of it is far too inappropriate for children, obviously. But my kids know Norm Macdonald. In fact, they may not even exist without him.

Truthfully, I didn’t have the easiest time in middle and high school. For one, I had an obvious anxiety disorder, though it wouldn’t get diagnosed officially until many years later. Anyway, I found great comfort in comedy… especially people like Norm Macdonald and George Carlin, and I started watching “The Late Show with David Letterman” every single weeknight. My laughter would wake my mom up at night, but thankfully she never told me to “keep it down.” I probably wouldn’t have been able to anyway.

I never had aspirations to be a comedian myself, but it relaxed me to study the routines — the verbal intonations, the mannerisms, etc. It helped to shape my own voice, and it helped me understand how my own brain operated. Honestly, this comedy helped to lift me out of some pretty dark places.

Even as I became an adult, Norm’s comedy served as a comfort, as well as an entry point into some of my most significant relationships. As it turned out my future wife also watched the “Norm” sitcom as it aired, even that season on Friday nights when the “cool kids” were out doing cool kid things.

Through parenthood, Norm’s more recent output, notably hours and hours of his podcast/talk show, filled my headphones while I rocked babies to sleep and scrubbed approximately 9,387 dirty milk bottles.

Whenever I’m down, which, let’s be honest, has happened a little more often during the pandemic, various Norm clips would lift me out of it. I’ve watched him tell “The Moth” joke at least 100 times, and I can recite full “SNL” appearances as Burt Reynolds at this point.

Anyway, the person my kids know as Dad was shaped significantly by this often defiant, always off-kilter collection of comedy. It’s a core source of happiness in my life, and even though it’s been one-sided, I’ve always considered it a personality-defining connection.

Our kids will have their own deeply personal connections with pop culture, be it a musician or a comedian or, shudders some TikTok star. From an outside perspective, it seems silly, and culturally we tend to mock “stans” for their almost-religious devotion to people they’ve never known in real life. I know I’ve scoffed at the idea of mourning a celebrity. Then I lost one I really cared about. Our kids will too… though hopefully not the author of “Dork Diaries” anytime soon.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to four kids, ages 4-10. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.