Act like you got some se.., p.1
Act Like You Got Some Sense, page 1
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First Edition: October 2021
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939255
ISBN: 9781538703281 (hardcover), 9781538703298 (ebook), 9781538719015 (large print), 9781538710913 (signed edition), 9781538710999 (special signed edition), 9781538722053 (special signed edition)
E3-202100913-DA-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Parenting… You Ain’t Ready for It
Granny
You Better Recognize
Dad Rule No. 1: You Gotta Show Up
The Switch from the Switch
Snitches Get Stitches
The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Less Money, Mo’ Problems!
It Takes a Village
Give It Up for Not Giving It Up
Getting to the Pearly Gates
New Dad
The Tale of Two Parties
Getting Roasted
Guns vs. Gucci
The King’s Gambit
Love & Basketball & Knowing When to Keep Your Mouth Shut
That Good Old Family Drama
Now I’m Raising My… Parents?!
Billie Eilish Also Raises My Daughter
Trippin’ Out
Feminism, Realism, and a Little Pole Dancing
Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!
Discover More
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dedicated to Estelle Marie Talley
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Foreword
By
Corinne Foxx
My dad (who I’m sure you know based on the cover of this book is Jamie Foxx) has led the most interesting life. He has laughed with sitting presidents, won numerous accolades, partied with the biggest names in hip-hop, chartered planes around the world—the list goes on and on. However, if you ask anyone who knows him, they would say what he talks about the most is not partying with Diddy or shaking hands with Obama. It’s my latest acting performance, or how many points Anelise scored in her last basketball game. Being a father is one of my dad’s greatest joys; it’s apparent in everything that he does. He makes his entire world revolve around me and my sister. If he could spend every waking moment with us, he would—though my sister and I would desperately need some space. We’re his pride and joy, and we feel that from him every day.
I think my dad wanted to write a book on fatherhood because when he started going through it, he had no blueprint on how to be a good father. He had to learn everything on the job, right in the moment. When I think of him at age twenty-six, holding me as a newborn, it must have been so intimidating for him. He had no idea what to do. But over the twenty-seven years of my own life, my father has been dedicated to figuring it out. He’s always tried to get it right, even though his execution was unorthodox sometimes—not every dad is gonna hang out with his six-year-old at a topless pool. I feel like my dad wanted to write a book about fatherhood so he could share the lessons he’s learned along the way. He can provide someone else with the map that he never got. I don’t think this book is meant to portray Jamie Foxx as the perfect father. God knows, he got it wrong a lot of the time, as you will discover on these pages. But his intentions were always pure. I never once had to question if he was going to be there for me, if he would show up. I always knew I’d be the last thing he’d ever give up on.
I was excited to learn he was writing this book because I knew it would offer an honest, harsh but still delightful view on fatherhood. You don’t need to be the perfect father; you don’t even need to know what you’re doing. The only thing that you have to do is try. Show up. Be there. Listen. My dad has always done those things—and my sister and I are better for it.
Parenting…
You Ain’t Ready for It
The first thing I learned about parenting is that the kids ain’t going nowhere. When Corinne was born, the responsibility smacked me upside the head, made me scared as hell. It dawned on me that this parenting thing is forever. And it’s not like having a puppy—the consequences of messing up are way worse than some shit on the carpet. When you take the kid to school on Monday, you actually have to get up and take them again on Tuesday. Damn, they got to go every day? The things you took for granted when you were a kid—like breakfast, lunch and dinner—that’s now on you. No one is coming to make food for them.
But lemme slow down and introduce myself. Hello, my name is Jamie. You may know me from film, television, stand-up comedy, the music world, being famous for my wild parties (which, by the way, are epic)—but there are two young girls in my life who don’t give a shit about any of that and only know me as “Dad.” Corinne is now twenty-seven, Anelise is thirteen. They have different mothers (don’t judge me and I won’t judge you).
Everything I learned about parenting came from Estelle Marie Talley and Mark Talley, the beautiful couple who adopted me at seven months. I consider them my grandparents because (and try to keep up because this story is messy) thirteen years before Mark and Estelle adopted me they had adopted my mother. Mark Talley was an uncle to my mother, Louise, whose family was the Rosebuds. From what I was told, my mother’s mother, my biological grandmother, was stressed trying to raise my mom’s other siblings. Believe me, I know how hard it is raising kids when you have money, and it’s hard as fuck when you don’t. So one day Estelle said to her, “I can’t have kids because God didn’t let me. I always wanted to have kids. Would you allow me to adopt Louise?” They agreed. I guess legally my mother is my sister—I know, it sounds like a country-ass Southern thing. But hey, I never married my cousin so, like I said, don’t judge me.
My mother was thirteen when she moved to Terrell, Texas, after spending her formative years in Dallas. Terrell was culture shock for her, to say the least. Dallas was a fast-moving city—not LA or New York, but certainly faster than Terrell, with its six stop lights. Though my mother moved begrudgingly, when she got there she was a star—beautiful, talented, charismatic. In high school she was the lead of the majorettes, strutting across the field with all eyes on her. Everybody wanted to be in her world.
But she never really took to Terrell, even though she was a big fish in a small pond. She yearned to get back to the hood in South Dallas, to what she knew. After high school graduation, she fled back there. By the time she turned twenty-six, she had gotten married to a man named Darrell Bishop and gave birth to a bighead boy named Eric Marlon Bishop. That was me. Their marriage didn’t work out. My dad converted to Islam while my mother was pregnant, which immediately drove a wedge between them. The people I grew up with didn’t have anything against Muslims, they just didn’t understand the religion—the only thing they knew about Muslims was bow ties and bean pies. And have you ever been to the South? No disrespect to Muslims or Jews but WE EAT PORK. Pork chops, pork ribs…Fuck it, we put pork in our whiskey! Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. Texans love to drink.
So my mother was having a hard time dealing with that…and now add a newborn into the mix! Her family saw she was overwhelmed and offered lots of help. As a result, in my early months I would spend the majority of time in Terrell with my grandparents, Estelle and Mark. Finally, Estelle said to her daughter, “Why don’t you let the boy stay here?” Soon that turned into, “Why don’t you let me adopt the boy?”
I was five when I found out I was adopted. The news of my parentage was shocking—imagine learning who you thought was your sister was actually your mom and who you thought was your mother was your adoptive grandmother-slash-aunt-by-marriage (yeah, the story is complicated). But it didn’t devastate me. This was a Black adoption—a kid is taken into a household by other family members, brought up with plenty of love and maybe somebody was getting a check in the deal. I had a family that cared for me. I was good. It didn’t cave me in. The earth didn’t stop spinning. I saw Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and shook my head when that dude choked his mom out with a pillow after he found out he was adopted.
Damn, bruh, did you have to kill her even after she took care of your silly ass?
Maybe
After I found out my grandparents weren’t really my parents, I finally met my biological mother (as far as I knew, I had a sister who lived far away). I learned that she was not ready for the responsibility of parenting—I mean, I get it now, she was not ready to give up her youth, she was still out in them streets. But back then, I had a hard time with my mother being absent in my life. I got to see things from her perspective just a bit when my daughter Corinne was young and I sometimes had a rough time fitting fatherhood into my crazy schedule. Because I too was out in them streets. In fact, I still am sometimes.
One conversation that shifted my perspective was when I was chopping it up with my friend Phil and I told him I was tied up the next day because I had to “babysit” my kid. He corrected me and said, “No, you’re not babysitting your kid, Black man, you’re watching your child. When you ‘babysit,’ that’s somebody else’s kid. You got to lose that mindset.”
I was a little embarrassed. “Oh, okay, yeah, not babysitting.”
At this point, Corinne was living with her mother, Connie, but I still saw her plenty. I even got pretty good at doing her hair—although sometimes the other moms at her school had to intervene (but I was smart enough not to use Gorilla Glue). So anyway, this one time Connie had to work and had asked me to watch Corinne. I should preface this story by saying I’m a musician/actor/comedian and most of my work takes place late at night, often after most normal folks have gone to bed. That means I’m not a daytime person. In my mind, daytime is for sleeping. So, when I got to Connie’s apartment, I was already sleepy as hell. Corinne was barely two at the time. I put a few toys in front of her and settled in on the couch.
“Just play with your toys, baby,” I said. “I’m gonna be right here.” I was right there—and I stayed there. I fell asleep. And when I woke up, my little bundle of joy had disappeared.
At first I thought, Oh, she must have toddled into another room. But as I searched the apartment and called her name, she was nowhere to be found. Are you fuckin’ kidding me?! I lost my daughter?! The panic started to set in, real hard. My heart felt like a giant rock in my throat.
“Fuuuuck!” I yelled out loud.
Just as I was about to start having heart palpitations, I heard a knock on the door. When I opened it, the guy who lived down the hall was standing there with Corinne beside him. He also had two little kids of his own with him.
“Does this belong to you?” he said with a smirk on his face.
“Oh my God!” I said. “Get in here.” Corinne started crying and yelling, “Noooo, not him!” I was thinking, Damn, Corinne, what the hell? Making it look like I’m some abusive father?! I snatched her up and brought her into the apartment, both angry and relieved. It was just horrible. I have no idea how long she was gone, but it’s twenty-five years later and I’m still breaking out in cold sweats right now just recalling that afternoon. I was lucky; it could have been tragic, horrific.
But back to my childhood. While my mother was out there living in the fast lane, my grandparents were there for me. They were the opposite of my mom, who might say she was coming to see me next week, or on Christmas, and never show up—leaving me with painful longings that took many years to recover from. But I had my grandparents, and though many of my nights with my grandmother were pretty dull—they mostly consisted of sitting through The Lawrence Welk Show, which she loved—they didn’t have to be exciting. I felt her love—even if I didn’t love her television viewing tastes.
Jumping ahead to when I first became a dad, I had become too busy building this guy named Jamie Foxx, and it was messing up my relationship with my young daughter—running off to do stand-up, gone for weekend after weekend, and not physically being there. That was not the lesson I had learned from Estelle and Mark. I knew I had to do better.
And that’s what this book is about. It’s an assorted mix of stories about the lessons I learned—sometimes the easy way, more often the hard way—about parenting. Was I a perfect parent when I first had kids? No. Am I a perfect parent now? No. I’ll probably look at this book in twenty years and be like What the fuck was I thinking back then? So why am I declaring myself some sort of authority on parenting? I’m not. You are, because you bought this fucking book. If you don’t get anything else out of it, just be there for your dumbass kids. But, stay with me here, keep reading and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two on what to do. Or not to do.
Granny
My grandparents told me they wanted me to have every tool in my toolbox—the educational tool, the artistic tool, the discipline tool, the moral tool. My grandmother wanted me to be worldly enough that I would be able to connect with any person in any room I walked into. She also wanted me to have a strong moral compass, because she knew when I moved away from Terrell and got out in the world, there would be many temptations and times when I needed to be able to say “No.” Probably should’ve said no to a few movies, but you can take that up with my agent.
Granny wasn’t above using every form of manipulation that she could conjure, wanting me to understand that the only way I would become special was through hard work. And sometimes, when I didn’t want to practice the piano, she would actually break down in tears.
“I done did everything I can,” she said through her sobs. “You just don’t care.”
I looked at her and felt the pain working its way through my chest. Damn, bruh, you made Granny cry?
“I don’t want you to blow it,” she said. “I don’t want you to be here. I don’t want you to be stuck here in Terrell.”
I didn’t completely understand what she was doing and saying, but I did sit my ass down at the piano and finish my lesson. My grandmother truly whipped me into shape, and to really understand me and how I look at the world, you need to get to know her.
Estelle Talley was the most influential figure in turning little nappy-headed Eric Bishop into the man I eventually became.
Granny was a tough lady…Basically, Granny was a badass bitch. Everybody in Terrell knew you better not step to Estelle with nothing “messy,” as she liked to call it, unless you wanted to get your ass handed back to you. But she never looked scary and was always well put together—all this power was in a tidy little box with a bow. She was Madea long before Tyler Perry put on the pumps and the gray wig. But unlike in Madea Goes to Jail, Granny wasn’t going to no jail, because the cops were scared of her too. She was a typical Taurus—which means she was blunt and stubborn as hell. A muumuu-wearing, .380-packing, churchgoing Taurus. With a little bit of cursing-your-ass-out on the side.
She showed me that there are ways to get away with always acting your truth. Her reason for being able to get away with it is that she practically raised our entire town.
For thirty years, she had her own nursery-school/day-care/can-I-just-leave-my-kids-here-for-a-minute-so-I-can-go-hang-with-my-boo place. The children at the nursery ranged from the white mayor’s kids from across the tracks to the Black principal’s kids from the southside. And me. She watched over us all and carried a very big stick—though when she thought I needed an ass-whupping, she usually handed that job to my grandfather (unfairly, I’d get more ass-whupping than other kids). She believed that a strong foundation of discipline allows young men and women to grow into strong, responsible adults.
There were many great days I remember at the nursery, running around with my little homies, playing games, watching television. Granny made sure we took care and respected ourselves, and that our bellies were full, even if we weren’t entirely sure what they were full of. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the mystery of the brownish-gray mush on Mystery Meat Mondays, but my grandmother was as tight-lipped as a KGB spy. Years later, she slipped up and finally told me the identity of the mystery meat: possum. Before you trip, let me say it wasn’t bad. Very fatty, a little gamey. But we were country-ass kids—we wouldn’t have cared.
