(upbeat music)
(applause and cheering)
Well, well.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you so much.
It's tragic to me when
a family dynamic is such
that it allows someone to
rise to their least,
and that's what happens there.
I mean, look, you all have all read that old poem,
Children Learn What They Live?
[Audience Members] Yes.
It's really true, I mean, kids will do
what you allow them to do,
and my specialty when I was in practice
was behavioral medicine.
And my specialty within that was brain and
central nervous system, so I dealt with
a lot of brain injuries, a lot of spinal cord injuries,
and one of the worst things I thought
was when a family
would baby or infantilize
someone that had been injured,
and allow them to regress
beyond where they were,
because if someone had an injury
and so all of a sudden they couldn't do
everything they used to do,
parents or family would come in and say
oh, baby, here, let me get that for you.
And I was like (bleeped).
(laughter)
They need to get that for themselves.
They'd say it'll take them five minutes to walk over there.
Well, I've got the time,
and they would say you are so cruel.
No, I'm not, I just want them
to observe themselves doing this,
and then pretty soon they would get back to
the level that they needed to be at.
But if you allow them to be
really incapacitated,
they will adjust to that level of incapacitation.
She has allowed this young man
to stop a half a credit short of graduating.
She's allowed him to live in the squalor
in this basement and then disrespect her,
and then she's saying well, I don't understand.
Yes, you do.
You need to require more, and I promise you
if he does not make a change within a week,
we have identified two shelters for him to move into,
because he will be out.
(applause and cheering)
And you know, all these parents are afraid of
their kids being poor.
Hell, I've been poor, I can do poor.
We didn't have diddly-squat.
That's right.
If it hadn't been for two for one burger books
one of us would have starved.
(laughter)
Right? Right, that's right.
One of us would have starved.
That's right. And it'd probably have
been you because I'm-- (laughter)
You're lucky I would only eat half of a burger too.
(laughter)
'Cause I'm bigger.
Always gave you half of mine.
Yeah, we had crumby jobs.
She worked at the airport. Yes, that's right.
She was on Unicom out at the little
private airport where she'd give 'em
the wind and the direction.
Yeah. (laughter)
And did you even know how to read the dial at first?
Well, yes, dear, I did.
(laughter)
I think she told 'em she knew how, but--
Oh, I have told lots of interviews
that I knew how to do it, did not know.
Airplanes flying all over-- I've convinced a lot of--
(laughter)
But yeah, we hung in there, we did it.
But really, you have to behave your way to success.
It's not fake it 'til you make it.
It's behave your way to success, right?
Yeah.
And you can get a job, I guarantee you.
Every one of us could get a job right now
if we went out on Melrose.
You go down there, somebody needs a storeroom cleaned out,
they need shelves moved, they need
weeds out of their parking lot, they need something.
You can get a job, every one of you could get a job today.
If you want one, you can get one,
and then it builds into something
and you can just go from there.
I've had some of the worst jobs in the world.
(laughter)
I've been fired from some really (bleeped) jobs.
(laughter)
I worked at Pizza Planet, and I got fired
'cause I could not remember to put the drinks on the ticket.
(laughter)
I'd go get 'em and then they said this is where
we make our profit, you idiot.
(laughter)
So, I was only 13, though.
I told them I was 17.
(laughter)
'Cause I was tall, so I got the job.