I'm Not Dead... Yet! (41 page)

I began to try and make life better
with just an attitude adjustment. I had very simple pleasures: hearing my children’s voices; Karla in any shape or form; holding very still in my chair watching
Jeopardy;
watching my favorite old
Three Stooges
episodes with Zephyr for the first time. Hearing his honest little laugh gave me the most pleasure imaginable. And, I loved to write. I could write. Nobody said I had to breathe perfectly in order to be a writer. So I wrote, I composed music, I exercised—and of all things, I loved building playhouses for my children.

One for Lyric after my first surgery—when I was feeling great…

and one for Zephyr after my second surgery (when I wasn’t).

People were still interested in my ideas in the compost heap that was becoming TV, so I kept writing. I wrote one pilot script—a work place comedy about actors who do voiceovers for animated series (something I know a lot about…). One of the stars of the show would be a paraplegic whose character would be the voice of a superhero. The other lead, a large muscular young man would voice the wimpy sidekick The show was about their lives
behind
the microphone and how that switched immediately once
away
from the microphone. Since she has a great comic mind and experience working on cartoon series, I asked Karla to help me create the show... We called it
Anim8ed
. The ‘Must See TV’ network bought the show from my pitch in the room, but my agent and the network wanted us to use a TV writer they both had a deal with to write the pilot. (Standard, but someone at the networks ought to think this process through if they like the soul of the show…) This man took over the script, wouldn’t listen to the head of network comedy’s notes, let alone ours, and he destroyed it. That simple.

As I was writing very, very late one night for a pitch at another network the following day, little Zephyr came into my office. Usually, when I was writing, nobody disturbed me in my …‘west wing.’ But little Zephyr wandered in and asked me what I was doing.

“I’m writing an outline for a show for a television series, sweetheart. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“I know something you can write, Daddy.”

“That’s nice. We can talk about it tomorrow. You need to go to bed and I need to write.”

“But Daddy, it would be a great show.”

“I’m sure it would. Now, please—let Daddy write and go to bed.”

“It would be like
The Three Stooges.
”

“Well, there’s already been a show called
The Three Stooges
so who would want another one? Aren’t you feeling sleepy? Karla!”

“But Dad—you should make it for women.”

“Zephyr, demographics show that women don’t like
The Three Stooges
.” I couldn’t believe I was talking demographics to a 6 year-old.

“And you could call it, ‘The She-Stooges.’”

I froze. Did he just say, ‘The She Stooges?’ All of the brilliant female comic talent out there not getting a chance to do physical comedy unless it’s a brief skit on
Saturday Night Live
or other sketch shows was a brilliant idea. And the title? Whoa.

“Did you just say ‘
The She Stooges
?’”

“Yes, Daddy. It would be so cool. We could watch it together.”

“Zephyr. I want you to know two things: one, I love your idea; two, you need to go to sleep—but if you ever have any more ideas, I want you to come tell Daddy. Promise?”

“Promise!”

“Good boy. Now go to bed. And when you sleep, know your idea was really wonderful.”

“I did good?”

“You did better than good.”

Zephyr ran out of the room clutching his stuffed animal yelling to Karla, “Mommy, Daddy said I did good!”

The next day I did not bring my work with me to the meeting at the network. I only brought a title. ‘The She Stooges.’

“Did you say ‘The She Stooges?’” the head of comedy asked me.

“The She Stooges,” I repeated, slowly.

“I love it!” he said.

‘The She Stooges’ got a green-light in the room (sounds like it happens all the time—it doesn’t) to be a pilot script.

“I just want you to know, it wasn’t my idea. You’ll need an extra credit for the creator.”

The head of comedy for the network looked at me as if I might have stolen the idea. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“It was my son’s idea. Created by Zephyr Benson. Oh—he’s 6 years-old.”

In 2000, I would have many ‘events’ of tachycardia
. My normal, standing heart rate was still about 50 beats per minute. But, like a light switch, suddenly my heart would race at 180 beats per minute and now, no matter what I would do (put my hand to my veins on my neck and grunt, like I was taught years earlier), nothing would stop these bouts of tachycardia—they would end when my heart decided they would end. On days when my heart rate would stay at 180 beats per minute for hours, by the time my the heart rate plummeted back to normal, I’d feel completely exhausted—as if I had just run a marathon.

Finally, I had what is called an ablation. From my point of view, it’s similar to a heart catheterization. To quote the Cleveland Clinic experts: “
During ablation, a doctor inserts a catheter (thin, flexible tube) into the heart. A special machine delivers energy through the catheter to tiny areas of the heart muscle that cause the abnormal heart rhythm. This energy ‘disconnects’ the pathway of the abnormal rhythm.”