Still Growing: An Autobiography (12 page)

Playing someone popular—a “breakout character” they called it—gave me influence on set. I wasn’t looking for that type of power; it just came with the territory. But even more confusing was the role I played with my own mother. At the age of only 14, I was my mother’s employer.

She worked for me, in a twisted order of hierarchy. Professionally, I told
her
what I wanted and didn’t want. I expected her to handle my appearances, schedule my auditions and manage my money.

I know that to most, having some kind of authority over one’s parents sounds like a dream come true. “Here’s how it’s gonna go down, Ma.” But it wasn’t at all. I wasn’t comfortable being my mom’s boss or with the daily flip-flop of authority. I was supposed to be her employer on the set and her kid once I walked through the front door of our house. The power shifts were freaky and hurt my brain a little.

Kirk was distant with me when I talked about business at home, so I came up with a plan to look different when I needed to play manager. I dressed in a suit and went to the set to see him. When he saw me in the suit, he knew there was business to attend to.

I tried to keep my commitment to just talk about work at work and not at home, but that didn’t last very long. There were too many decisions that needed answers at a moment’s notice.

The whole situation became more uncomfortable to me when I turned 16 and could drive myself to work. I didn’t think I needed a manager anymore, but it was my mother’s career. The situation was getting messy, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do.

I had watched my mom change from being a relatively shy and insecure woman to a strong woman in her job as my manager. I didn’t want to take that away from her. In a way, I felt my mom was dependent on
my
approval of
her
. I knew a good portion of her self-worth came from holding down this important job. She was finally building the confidence in herself she had always wanted.

I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, like I was responsible for everyone’s happiness—my mother’s, my friends’, the cast and crew, my fans and the entire nation of viewers who were relying on Mike Seaver to teach their kids right from wrong. The years of being “on” all the time began to suck away the joy and fun.

While being aware that I was responsible for everyone’s well-being, I took a very difficult step—one I agonized over for some time. I can’t remember how it happened, but I fired my mom.

I remember when Kirk said he needed to talk with me. I had known this day would come and had tried to prepare myself for it. The way Kirk approached me was very sensitive. I remember him telling me that since he had a new agent, he didn’t need me to manage his career anymore. His new agent would do that.

What meant a lot to him was the new camp he was starting, Camp Firefly. He asked me if I would still handle all the details of the camp for him. That eased the pain a bit.

It was hard to be “fired,” but I think letting go of his affairs was a relief to some extent. It had been difficult to try and maintain a normal mother-son relationship with the work dynamic thrown in.

Mom was gracious, but I bumbled through the conversation as only a teenager can—ineptly. There’s no easy way to “let a parent go” from a job and I wouldn’t wish that situation on anyone.

But what I really needed was a mom. I still wanted to take advantage of that free laundry service at home. I wasn’t about to turn away the homemade potato-chip casseroles or her famous turkey tacos. I didn’t even mind when the “chore chart” was put up on the fridge. That was the normalcy I craved. I wanted Mom to continue to bring warm cookies to the set, making me the guy with the best mom around.

Contrary to what you might think, Kirk Cameron had a side to him that was wild . . .

. . . 
ish
.

Okay, I was pretty straight-laced, even from a young age. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like a little adventure.

Like every boy, I really wanted a pet. But I was allergic to animal hair. I realize having “allergies” doesn’t help my street cred, either. But this might: I ended up living amongst reptiles. That’s cool, right?

I first got the idea while lizard hunting with Uncle Frankie when I was 10. We caught a black and yellow-striped garter snake and I kept that for a while. Later, I acquired a six-foot Burmese python and named him Dudley, after Dudley Moore, my co-star in the film
Like Father, Like Son
. The cast of
Growing Pains
gave me a red-tailed boa constrictor for my birthday one year and I named that one Glenn, after my cool set teacher. I had another red-tailed boa that I named Springsteen, named for—well, you can probably guess.

I put the snakes in my pockets, wore them around my neck and took them to school in my backpack. During recess or lunch I had a little following of snake lovers who would go with me behind the handball courts, where I brought them out.

My sisters loved the snakes. They draped them around their necks or put them around their waists like belts. Melissa and I laid on the futon bed, very still, and let them swarm all over us, just like River Phoenix in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
.

As long as I kept them in the cage, Mom didn’t mind my reptilian friends.

Until they got out.

Once somebody left the cage open and one of my slithery friends wrapped itself around the toilet bowl (giving new meaning to the phrase “snaking the toilet”). This was neither pleasant nor charming to my dear mother.

Sometimes they wrapped themselves around a doorknob or hid in the crevices of the couch. One slipped behind my dad’s bathroom sink vanity into the wall. I grabbed it by the tail, but because snakes are all muscle and very strong, I couldn’t get him out. After trying many different methods, we finally pointed a hair dryer inside the hole. In moments, it had heated up so much that he shot out of there, much like me at a stuffy industry event.

To feed my little reptilian herd, I bought rats from the pet store—until they got too expensive. A Japanese neighbor taught me how to catch rats in the hills by making a trap for them. The disgusting part is that I had to kill them before I fed them to the snakes, or the snakes could lose an eye (or worse)—rats are nasty little buggers when they fight for their lives. Case in point: One got out of the cage and bit me. I decided to fix him. In the garage we had a giant meat freezer. I put the whole cage in the meat freezer and a few hours later, he was a ratscicle, poised and ready to run.

(I kindly ask readers not to turn me in to PETA.)

For a while, I kept a stash of dead rats in the house freezer. Big deal. They’re in plastic bags, right? Yet for some odd reason, Mom objected. I moved them to the outside freezer. When it was time for a meal, I thawed one or two out in the sun until they got nice and aromatic. Then I thrust them inside the cage and poked ’em with a stick to make them look alive. The snakes bought my little marionette show every time.

My sisters each had a pet hamster. The male got busy servicing the females and soon there were nine baby hamsters. There were so many
babies, I figured my sisters wouldn’t miss one. And my snake was hungry.
How good can Melissa be at math, really?

Very good, apparently. Melissa was horrified when she walked in just as my snake opened his jaws and descended on her baby.

As the snakes got bigger, they needed too many rats, so I decided to feed them chickens. The downside was killing the birds—for some reason, murdering chickens was tougher on my psyche than rats.

Learning about sex was an adventure.

Mom and Dad didn’t rush to bring it up. Mom remembers attempting a conversation with my sisters about sex as she backed out of the driveway. With all the sincerity she could muster, Mom said, “I want to talk to you about . . . the birds and the bees.”

Bridgette said, “
Moooom
, we already
know
about all that stuff.”

Surprised, Mom stopped in the middle of the street. “Really, where? Who told you about that?”

“Our friends,
duh
.”

“That’s supposed to be something moms talk about with their daughters,” she said, disappointed.

“Shoulda brought it up two years ago, then,” my sisters laughed.

I didn’t get “the talk” either. Instead, I looked at the set of encyclopedias in our house and thought,
I wonder if the word
“
sex” is in there
. I took the “S” volume to my room and discovered that the word
was
there. So was an explanation. I longed to get back the image of a baby brought by a long-beaked bird—but life had changed. At 10 years old, innocence had been shattered. I remember reading the clinical details and thinking,
Oh, disgusting! There’s gotta be a better way than that!
(I don’t see it the same way anymore—for the record.)

At 16, I shot
Like Father, Like Son
in San Diego. As usual, Mom came with me.

One day, a bunch of us on the film went to Mexico for a day off. We ate at a restaurant where other under-aged kids were drinking margaritas.

I looked at Mom, my moral barometer. As much as I complained about her, I really respected her a lot. So when she shrugged and said, “It’s up to you, Kirk,” I figured this one time wouldn’t be a big deal. And it wasn’t. I don’t think I drank more than a few sips.

That was the only alcohol I had as a minor.

Uncle Frank took great pains to teach me how to dance. It was very kind of him, but his training didn’t produce spectacular results.

At my first middle school dance, I couldn’t even get up enough nerve to make it out on the floor. I went into the bathroom and practiced my moves in front of the mirror for at least an hour, with Debbie Harry pumping through the walls. When I came out, I still couldn’t do it. It became my default position—hiding in the stalls.

I eventually warmed up to the whole slow dancing thing, but that was easy: All you had to do was hold on for dear life and sway.

My big claim to walking the wild side happened when I was 15. The entire cast and crew had been flown to Hawaii to shoot
Growing Pains
. I wanted to do something crazy, like getting a tattoo or a piercing. Brian Peck (my stand-in), Brooks (my friend) and I decided to do something Insane with a capital
I
.

We strutted the streets of Honolulu, pondering our options. We settled on an ear piercing. A lightweight risk, to be sure, but I certainly wasn’t going to stick a needle in any other body part.

Going into the store with a swagger, I thought,
Look out world, I’m gettin’ pierced
.

Walking out I thought,
Oh, no. What’s Mom gonna say?

I shoved Brooks in front of me, making him go into our hotel room first, me tip-toeing behind. Mom took one look at him and
said, “Brooks! You got your ear pierced! It looks really good on you. Kinda cool.”

She didn’t freak. Maybe I’ll be okay
.

I walked around him and said, “Hi, Mom . . . what did you do this afternoon?”

Mom gaped in stunned silence.

Brooks and I busted up laughing, hoping that making light of it would go over better with Mom.

She stammered a bit. Because she always liked being a cool mom, I figured she was struggling between that and being really ticked at me.

“Well, at least you didn’t get a tattoo,” she said under her breath. “You can’t get rid of a tattoo.” She scowled, took a deep breath and put her hands on my shoulders so that she could look me directly in the eye. “Kirk, it’s not that you got your ear pierced—it doesn’t look bad. I even sort of like it. It’s that you went off and deliberately did it without asking.” She turned around and went into the other room.

I felt horrible.

She didn’t talk to me for two days.

Murdering chickens wasn’t my only crime. I also broke laws in my choices of clothing.

Most of my clothes were chosen by someone else. I didn’t have to worry about wardrobe on set—the costumer chose those. I blame him for any of Mike’s embarrassments in couture.