Archives
Cosby shares his hard-won wisdom with UB crowd
By DONNA BUDNIEWSKI
Reporter Assistant Editor
In short order, Bill Cosby nixed the podium, the floor microphone and the requisite question-and-answer period that follows every lecture in the Distinguished Speakers Series, clearing the air of any intellectual pretense for being there other than sharing his hard-won wisdom revealed in hilarious stories about growing up, raising a family and growing old.
Although he was a few minutes late—having driven in from Manhattan after last Thursday's extreme winds prevented him from flying into Buffalo—he dived right in, reciting the effects of long car trips on 60-year-olds and the numerous pit stops required just to make it across the state.
Wearing sweats, a blue UB baseball cap, white athletic socks and Birkenstock sandals, he pulled up a chair center-stage, leaned back, then forward, hands never still, and when needed, got up and told his stories with all the physical comedy his 6-foot-plus frame commands. He may look like the grandfather he is, but his humor is still too sharp and observant to be called "warm and fuzzy." When he appeared on stage, students barely old enough to appreciate "The Cosby Show," except in re-runs, shouted out "We love you, Bill."
For a little more than two hours, he regaled the sell-out crowd in the 8,000-seat Alumni Arena with tales about his first job and being educated and "homeless," his frustration with a daughter he referred to as a "professional 'C' student with an 840 SAT score" and the differences between men and women that never seem to fade, even in his own 40-year marriage.
About middle-aged parties: "We don't have to worry about someone slipping ecstasy into our drinks—they might try to slip Viagara in there instead."
For college students "living the full campus life" who think they know more than their parents: "Your parents could put you out. You have nothing—you have no money, you couldn't even get a good lawyer…Your parents, your guardians, I'm on their side."
On the rising expense of a college education: "The greatest thing to stop women from having children is the cost of college tuition."
And on smoking pot, traditionally a favorite extracurricular activity for some college students: "To get high, you don't need the grass. It's all about the air—just suck in lots of air. Do that for four or five minutes," he said, sucking air loudly through his two pinched fingers and then holding his breath. "Hold it in and pretty soon the room will start spinning—and the good thing is, you won't even be hungry."
He said he and his wife shared a "life's plan," which was to give love, understanding, nurturing and support to their children, who then were to graduate from college, get married and have children of their own, at which point he and his wife would die, having fulfilled their duties.
"But," he explained, "they won't let you die because they need a co-signer."
He told the young men in the audience that life was good and in their control from about the age of birth to puberty—and with MTV, puberty might begin at about five and a half, he quipped—but that it was the last time he won anything going up against females. In marriage, he warned, "they move your stuff around, you don't know where it is. It never dawns on me to touch her stuff." And when he ventures to ask his wife where his stuff might be, she launches into the familiar "'What do I look like' lecture," he said. "Do I look like I know where your stuff is?" he said, mimicking his wife. "Do I look like the laundress?"
In his raucously funny way, Cosby touched on most of the essential themes of everyday life that bind us all together, for better or worse, in this all-too human experiment.