I Know Just How The Cat In The Hat Feels
Being a healthcare and education keynote speaker and co-star of The Baby Boomer Comedy Show, Clean Comedy For People Born Before Seat Belts, it’s hard to explain what I do for a living to our seven year-old grandson, Kai. Sure, he’s seen me perform on television and YouTube but he thinks I’m just screwing around like I do with him when he’s at our house.
But since every other adult in his life has a job, when he doesn’t have school, he spends the day with me. The Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving were just such days. He and I are playing Corral The Dinosaur. I’m using my wife, Twyla’s, tube of Bath and Body Works body cream as a zapper trying to corral a t-rex. Even though Kai has his elbows tucked against his side to portray the short arms of a t-rex, he knocks the zapper out of my hand and stomps on it.
The explosion all over our living room snaps us back to reality. Kai looks like, “I’ve done messed up big this time” strikes me funny and I laugh and laugh. (When both of my kids pointed out I would have jumped all over them if they’d done something like that, I tell them Bill Cosby said, grandparents are different people than they were as parents because now they’re old people trying to get into heaven.) I laugh until I realize there is just 90 minutes before Twyla gets home from school.
We throw our cloths in the washing machine. I get dressed, but since I don’t have any other clothes for him, Kai’s helping me clean the living room in his underwear. We’re cleaning the walls, ceiling, furniture, floor, even the two cats who were napping in the line of fire. Just like The Cat In The Hat cleaning up after a visit from Thing One and Thing Two, Kai is pulling on his clothes warm from the drying and I’m whipping down the last window as Twyla pulls into the driveway.
She walks into the living room, which pretty much looks the same as it did when she left nine hours ago except now the scent of orange ginger hangs heavy in the air. She says, “It smells like my body cream in here.”
And this child that I’d spent the past 90 minutes conspiring to keep out of trouble sells me out, saying, “It was Papa Kent’s fault.”
The only question now is who is going to watch him during Christmas break?
Known as the “World’s Cleanest” comedian and speaker, Kent Rader helps people learn and experience how laughter matters in reducing stress. Kent is the winner of the Branson Comedy Festival and co-stars in The Baby Boomer Comedy Show, Clean Comedy For People Born Before Seat Belts.
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Known as the "World's Cleanest Comedian and Speaker," Kent helps people and associations learn and experience how laughter matters in reducing stress and building successful, profitable organizations.
Kent graduated from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri with a B.S. in Accounting. He survived five years in public accounting and twelve years as C.F.O. and C.E.O. of hospitals before becoming a professional speaker in 1997.
Kent is the author of the stress reduction book "Let It Go, Just Let It Go" and co-stars with Jan McInnis in the Baby Boomer Comedy Show, "Clean Comedy for People Born Before Seat Belts, Safety Helmets, and Facebook.
He has been heard on NPR's Talk of the Nation and Sirius Satellite radio.
Kent is the winner of the Branson Comedy Festival and has been seen on Comcast's comedy show, "Who's Laughing Now." His clean, stand-up comedy DVD-CD titled "Kent Rader: The Grand Wizard of Comedy" was released in 2014.