Dave Chappelle
High People Ideas
I see my age in my children. I came home from the road, this is not long ago. I’d been gone for– If you picture, I was gone for weeks and weeks, and when I came back, nobody was home. Not one person in my family thought that maybe I’d like to see them when I got back. They knew when I was coming back, but they just weren’t…

They just weren’t home. And that shit was a wake-up call. You know, like, when my kids were little, and the tour bus would pull up to the house, these motherfuckers would spill out. “Dad is home. Hooray!” And they’d hug me and kiss me. And then, as the years went on, they’d get less interested. “Hey, everybody, look, it’s Mr. Promises back from the road.” But an empty house, that’s… That’s some cold shit. I went into my oldest son’s room. I was like, “Hello? Hello?” He was gone. I’d never done this to him before, but for some reason, I just did it. I just… I just looked through his shit. Just to see who this motherfucker was becoming. I found these notebooks, and I started going through the notebooks, and it was all this wonderful poetry in them. It was his handwriting. I didn’t even know this n***a wrote poems.

Then I look through his drawers, and I open up his middle drawer… and I found this rolling paper. And I looked down at them papers, like, “Oh… that’s where that poetry is coming from.” And that shit broke my heart. I mean, I smoke weed, but I mourned my son’s innocence. And I cried a little bit…

and I took his papers upstairs in my room. Rolled some weed that I’d hid from the family. And I got really high. And then I got paranoid… so I put his papers back how I found them… so he wouldn’t know what I was up to. This n***a won’t even know that that happened till he sees this special. Yeah, n***a, I found your papers.

He’s a cold motherfucker. This kid is only 16 years old. Listen to what he did to me. This motherfucker calls me up… in the middle of the night. It was one o’clock in the morning. He goes, “Dad, don’t be mad.” I knew something was terribly wrong. I said, “What’s going on?” He said, “Listen, I’m fine. And don’t forget you told me to do this. I’m at a party, and my designated driver had too much to drink. Me and my friends need you to come pick us up.”

I said, “Jesus Christ. It’s one o’clock in the morning, n***a. I am shitfaced.” But then I figured fuck, it’s better me than some kid. I might as well roll the dice and go pick my n***a up. I said, “All right, I’m coming to get you. Give me the address and I’ll be right there.” And then he gave me the address, and I was shocked. I said, “Son, you are not gonna believe this, but… I’m at the same party, n***a.”

They grow up fast, don’t they?