Joyful Recollections of Trauma: A Hilariously Cathartic Memoir-in-Essays of Childhood Turmoil, Self Healing, and Finding Happiness

by Paul Scheer

But the thing is, will a string of Mardi Gras beads mean anything to anyone but me? Nothing is labeled. No one will know that I got the beads during an insane melee that happened post–Super Bowl in a small New Orleans bar after Channing Tatum got “served” by another patron in the bar and then the two of them did an impromptu dance-off. I didn’t even realize that dance battles happened in the real world (clearly, I didn’t go to musical theater school). For me, as a huge Step Up fan, watching Channing and his challenger was like watching Step Up 3D in actual 3D and with smells (good smells, but smells nonetheless).

Now you might be thinking, Paul, you had three horses; you can’t just gloss over that—were you rich? And the answer is no! I honestly don’t know where they came from. I was told our family friend gave us first dibs on horses that were about to be put down, but as I type that, it feels like total horseshit (pun intended). I was a kid; I didn’t ask too many questions. I just accepted the reality I was given—which, you will see, is a recurring theme in this book.

As an only child, I was used to keeping myself occupied for hours on end. Making a snack became a cooking show for no one. I never did chores; instead I became a character hired to do my chores and would boss myself around. I talked a lot to people who weren’t there and also to myself—anything to break up the silence of being all alone in my house. When I did just play, I’d improvise movies of my own creation and act out all the characters. Since I was a kid who grew up on action movies—the ones with troubled cops whose personal lives were a complete mess and who had multiple vices but were damn good at their jobs—I created my own, Lance Hanson, a disgraced cop in his mid-forties: every kid’s dream. Lance was always being called back to the force for one more case. Whenever I was alone, the movie would start right from where it had ended the last time I played.

They passionately kiss. (Note: I acted out this kiss and it was sexy.)

“I found a fire, and it won’t go out!” “I found a fire” seemed to be the best tactic. It put me in a heroic position, making me essentially a human Lassie. All I knew was that I couldn’t go down for this. The punishment for this crime would be huge.

As a child, the idea of going to jail was very real for me. In the short time I’d spent with Hunter, he had often attached the threat of jail to the smallest things: “If you don’t hang up your coat, you’ll go to jail.” Or “If you don’t wash your plate in the sink, you’re going to jail.” He said it so frequently, presenting it as an eventuality rather than a possibility, that I was convinced there was a jail for kids who misbehaved. But to make matters worse, Hunter didn’t stop at telling me I would be going to jail; he would explain what would happen to me when I was there. He would describe how not only would I be locked away from my friends and family, but I would also be raped on a daily basis. Yes, raped. I didn’t even know what sex was as an eight-year-old, let alone rape. My mind created these vivid pictures that weren’t unlike rape, but at that age, the idea was even more horrifying, because I couldn’t truly comprehend it. If I could go to jail for not picking up my coat, starting a fire was way worse; that definitely was a crime.

Public schools in my neighborhood were rough: my friend’s brother was stabbed through the hand with a pencil in third grade. So my parents enrolled me in this small private school on Long Island that seemed to cater to wealthy European and Asian families who were in the country for short periods of time on business and, oddly, the rest of the students were local middle-class kids. So, when you were invited to a birthday party, you really never knew what you were going to get. Would it be a mobile petting zoo and bespoke cupcakes or pin the tail on the donkey and a sheet cake from the local supermarket? But I should have known something was up when my friend Elena’s third-grade birthday invitation specified “formal attire.” Elena’s party was unlike any I had ever been to; she lived in a giant mansion on the water, and a large yacht was moored to the side of the house.

We often were left alone out there and I was treated like one of the animals. Most of my time in the barn was spent literally being pulled around by my hair, to “get my attention.” Like a dog, my nose would be rubbed in whatever mistake I made. I was sprayed with hoses, locked in dog kennels, kicked, choked, and often left alone to tame animals three times my size. I don’t mention these things cavalierly, but they were done with such regularity that they don’t even register as the traumatic events they were.

the security guard told us if I wanted to meet Mr. Walken, there were some rules. “Mr. Walken is working on a very secretive project and you can’t bring your camera inside and also no parents.” I’d have to go alone. I gave a look to my dad, who said, “Up to you?” I smiled, passed my camera to my dad, and followed the security guard across the street. He opened a door to a darkened warehouse.

I spent one summer in a military school–-themed summer camp, which was just as fun as it sounds. My parents became suspicious about what was going on in this camp when it seemed like we were doing manual labor disguised as “activities.” The final straw, however, was when I told my parents that the counselors insisted on watching all the boys when they peed to avoid any “funny business” in the bathroom. Upon hearing this, they immediately pulled me from camp. While they might have been slow to action on dealing with issues inside the house, they were surprisingly quick to deal with outside threats.

there was a big-biceped beardo pacing in our driveway. I ducked down under the window to avoid him seeing me. My heart started to speed up. He once again approached the porch and banged on the door, but this time he also started peering into our front windows. I sat frozen, crouched under the window, as he stared through the one right above me. “Hunter!” he screamed. I felt relief hearing him yell out Hunter’s name. At least now I knew it wasn’t those bike guys coming back for me.

His face contorted back to anger and he yelled, “You’re lying! Let me in!!!” He pounded at the door so hard, it felt like the glass was about to explode. “I know he’s in there!” he yelled.

When my parents came home, I gave them the note. I told them of the whole ordeal. “Wow, he sounds like a real crazy. Make sure you always lock the doors,” they said. They picked up the shattered picture that had crashed to the floor earlier in the day, pulled out the remaining glass, and hung it back up on the wall—like nothing had happened. But something had happened!

think every kid wants to be Kevin McCallister, because they want to be home alone—but no kid wants to feel alone.

These trips were important and I wasn’t going to miss a thing. What kid doesn’t want to get an up-close look at the deep-sea oil rigs that fuel Norway’s bustling economy?

I replaced my Birnbaum book with a bottle of Lactaid. When pizza appeared or ice cream was served, I stepped back. But there was a silver lining. Somehow I had said goodbye to the boy I was—obsessed with attractions—and instead, I became the attraction. In the eyes of my peers, I had aged decades on that trip. I was now a man—a man who couldn’t eat dairy. I instantly became that mid-forties disgraced cop from movies I had always wanted to be. I had a history. And it wasn’t pretty.

My mom and Hunter had been venturing deeper and deeper into born-again Christianity, and I was getting used to this type of behavior where people simply didn’t practice what they preached. If you disagreed, spoke up, or asked questions that challenged their point of view, you’d be struck down. Everything felt punitive.

Most importantly, why wasn’t all this worship changing the chaos and abuse in our house? Hunter was the same guy he was no matter how many times the spirit of the Lord spoke through him. If anything, now I lived in fear of two people: one in the material world and the other on the spiritual plane.

the intense guilt and fear of godlike vengeance remained and were further drilled into me by years of Catholic school. There if the nuns hit you, you were told it was okay because they were servants of God. When I left home for college, I felt like I finally was free.

it wasn’t the Hulk I was afraid of. I loved the Hulk. I was afraid of the split second when he turned—when man became monster.

As I got older, I realized more and more just how alone Mom and I were during that time. It wasn’t that we wanted to stay; it was that we didn’t have any help to get out. Over the years, we asked so many people to intervene. They were either scared to interfere or, as one relative put it, “we didn’t want to intrude on your family business.”

We tried to convince Hunter to go to family counseling for a long time, and when we finally succeeded, the therapist asked me to detail every violent physical interaction I’d had with him. Hunter wasn’t allowed to interrupt; he just had to listen. As I told her every story of abuse I could remember, from washing my hands with scalding water until my fingers lost sensation to him routinely slapping my face and giving me wedgies that made my eyes tear, the therapist’s shock was apparent. She eventually had to cut me off because the list was so long and she had more than enough to prove her point. She challenged Hunter: “Let’s make an agreement: if you ever lay a hand on your stepson or wife again, I’m going to call the police.” I believed her. Finally, we had someone who would hold him accountable. He did hit me again. We all went back to the counselor. I told her exactly what had happened, and she took a long breath and said, “Okay, Hunter, this is your last chance. If it happens one more time, I’ll call the police.” She let him off the hook! She treated him like she had caught a kid stealing an Oreo from the pantry. I had never felt more helpless. I knew she was never going to call the police, and I knew we were never going to family counseling again, because Hunter had gotten lucky, and he wasn’t going to double down on his good luck. We left that office and never returned, and the therapist never followed up with us.

I once made an anonymous call to Child Protective Services that brought a police officer and counselor to our house. They interviewed Mom and Hunter together in the same room. It was like interviewing a kidnapper and kidnappee together: you aren’t going to get the true story. My mom was too scared to say anything. Plus the counselor never spoke to me. Suffice it to say, CPS didn’t find anything wrong—once again reinforcing the idea that if you live through it and have no scars, you’re fine and why complain. I often thought, Maybe one time he will break my arm or leg, then...

My dad’s response to Hunter was the toughest to come to terms with. Dad was very present in my life. The Herculean efforts he made to juggle work and fulfill his duties as a parent continue to astound me. He was my rock; though my parents were divorced and he lived and worked over an hour away, he never missed any of my big events. Not only did I spend every weekend with him, but he also came to our house after school twice a week just to be with me. Hunter was jealous of my dad’s relationship with me simply because my dad was my dad, and Hunter couldn’t compete. In his warped brain, Dad was his greatest rival, and Hunter needed to take him down. He saw the joy I had in my eyes when Dad was around, a joy Hunter couldn’t take away or duplicate. So in typical fashion if he couldn’t earn it, he forced it—whether it was making me call him Dad, insisting on me giving him kisses, or talking shit about my dad and sharing things that my mom told him privately about her and my dad’s relationship. It didn’t work. I loved my dad and nothing was going to change that. When I’d talk to my dad about Hunter and how he treated me, my dad would listen but never emotionally engage. I was so frustrated by his rational responses. I wanted him to be my defender. Unlike my grandma, he never expressed anger that this was happening to me, that I was subjected to this violence. He never made a move to change anything. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard my dad talk badly about Hunter, even to th...

Long after we left Hunter, my anger stayed with me. It reached its peak in high school when I sent a kid to the hospital. He had to get stitches after I wouldn’t stop driving his face into a nearby car fender during our fight in the parking lot. I saw the look on the other kids’ faces as they watched me pummel my classmate. It was the same look on my friends’ faces at my birthday party when they saw Hunter whip me with a belt. I knew in that moment I’d gone too far. I saw the damage I was doing. I’d become Hunter. I was the aggressor. Years after Hunter was out of my life, this anger remained. Being bullied always brought it right back to the surface. I’d been lying to myself, saying that these kids deserved it. They didn’t. I thought I had control over my rage. I didn’t. Once it was unleashed, it took over, and my fuse was so short that I was actually dangerous.

It was hard; in my household, there wasn’t much apologizing going on. Apologizing meant you were wrong. If someone else was responsible for your behavior, then you never had to be accountable for anything.

When I think I’m in my darkest moment, knowing I have a partner I can express this to makes everything less scary, and she can relate to my darkness.

A look of genuine shock came over his face as I told him what Mom and I had gone through, the look of horror and pity and disbelief you’d get from someone who hadn’t been there. But he had been. He just kept saying, “I didn’t know.” But he must have known something; he had heard my stories, and he had even been in a fistfight with the man. It was odd, but I left that talk at City Crab feeling fulfilled simply because Dad and I had spoken about it; that step alone was so big that, in the moment, it felt like enough. Becoming a dad changed my perspective on the events of my childhood. I stopped thinking about myself living through abuse, and I imagined my sons going through that same thing at the hand of a stepfather. I asked myself how I would react to my kids telling me the stories that I told my dad. What would I do? The answer was always: I wouldn’t just do something, I’d do everything. As much as I love my dad, I was finding myself angry at him for the first time. So I reached out again. Sadly, I’ve found that in the decades that have passed since our first conversation, his memories have gotten fuzzier, and now he continues to blame everyone but himself: “I didn’t think it was that bad,” or “I thought you were exaggerating,” or even, “I thought your mom would be able to handle it, ’cause she told me she could.” Now years later I’m finding the small amount of progress we made in our first conversation has taken a giant step back.

In my case and, as I imagine, in many cases of abuse, I was failed by people who loved me. They didn’t know how to be, or didn’t want to be, responsible. Not speaking about it created a subconscious shame and embarrassment deep within me about what I went through. Why wasn’t I worthy of being saved? For a long time I kept it in; I didn’t want to make this part of my story. It was too dark; it made people feel badly. But not acknowledging my trauma took away my triumph. I survived. I want to make surviving the abuse part of my story. I want to wear my former shame with pride.

Another classmate told me a condom, which he called a rubber, was when you took the eraser part of a pencil off and shoved it in your pee hole before having sex to prevent the girl from getting pregnant. Seemed plausible enough, albeit extremely painful.

When you have access to a laminating machine and work a slow eight-hour shift, you want to laminate everything, and we did. Note: Don’t laminate your Social Security card; doing that seems to be somewhat illegal, which is something I learned too late, and I’m reminded of it every time I need to produce my card.

If you need clarification, many academic texts can break down the differences between short-form (CCL) versus long-form (UCB) improv, but here’s my attempt. Short-form improv is based on games, short scene structures predetermined before the show, and you improvise within them. You could see the same structure multiple times with different results. Long-form improv is unstructured; the group creates the show as they are doing the show. No two shows will play out the same way. There is more nuance than that, but this is not that book. Suffice it to say that neither is better, and both can be done exceptionally well or poorly.

At the bar I sat with my friends, drinking, laughing, and celebrating this accomplishment. I wasn’t thinking about what was next; I was just enjoying the now. I was basking in the fact that I went from a life where I often played by myself and acted out scenes alone to being surrounded by some of the funniest and most talented performers ever. I would never be alone in that way again unless I needed a vanity project.

The assistant instructed me to sit, and then a beautiful young woman came over. The assistant said, “This is Britney. I think you two are about the same age.” We were. The assistant went on, “You two should have lunch ’cause this place is full of adults.” The assistant walked away and left me with the star of the photo shoot. We had a stilted but nice conversation over turkey sandwiches. I asked her about being a model, and she told me she was actually a singer. She asked me what I did, and I confided, “I don’t know.” She laughed, not realizing I was being more truthful than charming. After a few minutes, she was whisked away, and I was ushered back to my office as quickly as I had been pulled out of it. Months later, I was watching MTV when I saw the girl I had a turkey sandwich with! Holy shit! The video was really good and the song was “. . . Baby One More Time.” I wrote down her name, Britney Spears. I wanted to make sure I was right, that this was indeed the same girl. So I went back to work the next morning, and I told the guy who stored my bag under his desk that I thought I’d had lunch with Britney Spears when she was here for that Tommy Hilfiger campaign a few months ago. Then we did something that was probably illegal. He told me to “check the files.” This was Hershlag/Portman all over again. I rolled my chair over to a giant file cabinet, and I found the contract and searched for the signatures. It was indeed Britney Spears. I stared at the contract that she had...

I stood at the door and loudly announced, “Yes! The rumors are true.” My officemates’ heads turned. “I’ve been fired. And believe me when I say, if it can happen to me, it can happen to you! So watch your back!” I held for applause, which never came. Then exited with my head held high.

I went back to introduce myself and tell them how much I loved the show. Casey greeted me warmly, and we chatted briefly, but June was a little harder to read. I tried to engage but got nothing. Her attitude wasn’t rude so much as it was telegraphing I don’t have time for this chitchat bullshit—which is a phrase I’ve often heard her say, so I feel like I read her right.

I waited outside the theater, and June was late, very late. She texted right at showtime, incredibly apologetic; she had overdone it on a vodka luge at a holiday Christmas party (which is the best excuse ever) and she was taking herself home because she had no business being out and about in the world. I took the cancellation in

I went to the shoot, where I was tackled by Chyna, which left me a bit concussed. But it was worth it, because the blunt trauma to the head took away my pre-maybe-date nerves and secured me a paycheck to pay for this date.

Back in the mid-2000s, Friday Night Lights was still in its infancy, and I saw Connie Britton leaving the movies. I was a fan, and I wanted to say something, but I also didn’t want to blow her cover in a crowded space or risk making things awkward, so I came up with a plan: I made a beeline toward her and quickly blurted out, “I just want to tell you I think you are phenomenal. Love your work. Have a great night.” As quickly as I said this, I kept walking—it was a gratitude drive-by. While it may have been a bit unnerving in its speed, I was proud of that interaction. I geeked out and got out—perfect. It felt good until, the following weekend, I went to a wedding where I realized that my friend was dating Connie Britton and we were all seated at the same table. Fuck! Now my mind was racing: Does she realize I’m the same guy? It was so recent. When she sat down, we shook hands, and she stopped, looking curiously at me. “We’ve met, right?” My brain raced through how this could play out. Do I just admit it? Maybe it will be funny. No, it will be weird. So I did what I do best in moments like these: I lied. I pretended to think for a second and said, “I don’t think so?” I couldn’t tell whether she bought it, so I went to plan B: out of sight, out of mind. I literally didn’t go back to the table for the rest of the night. I ate at a different table. It was the only way I could be assured not to have an awkward moment. June was confounded: “Where did you go?” To which I replied,...

I love telling stories, and when they came out on episodes of How Did This Get Made?, I never imagined the reaction to them would be so strong. HDTGM listeners, this book is for you. But instead of thank you I will simply say, GEOOOSTOORM!!

One of the most important things you need to write a book is time. I’m very lucky to have a person in my life that affords me that time. Juliana De La Torre watches over our children and helps our family in countless ways. I’m forever grateful for finding you and the time you have given our family.

Robyn E. Smith, this book is an outgrowth of the work we have done, and I’m forever grateful that I was able to have you on this journey with me.

All the assistants at Aevitas, UTA, Verve, WME, Sechel PR, and Sugar 23. We all know you make this world run.

Oh, and of course, my third family, Steve Ballmer, Ty Lue, and the entire LA Clippers organization—you make it all worthwhile.