When Larry David Was 12, His Worried Mom Wrote A Newspaper Psychologist About Him
If you had a kid like Larry David, wouldn’t you be worried? When David was only 12 years old, his mother was so concerned about his stubbornly cranky behavior that she wrote a letter to The New York Post’s resident psychologist to ask for advice, David told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.
How did young David find out? He read the letter himself in the popular column penned by Dr. Rose Franzblau and instantly knew he was the subject of concern. “It was my mother, I know it,” he told Fallon. “She was saying that, ‘My son — he’s 12 years old. He hates people. He’s morose. He’s taciturn.’”
Sounds like 12-year-old David was already on brand.
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One detail in particular gave David’s mother away: “‘He doesn’t trick-or-treat. He doesn’t go out trick-or-treating,’” David remembers reading in the paper with a flash of recognition. “That’s me! I didn’t trick or treat. I knew it was me.”
David wishes he’d clipped the newspaper column but there’s no doubt in his mind that he was the letter’s subject. Mrs. David’s search for psychiatric help for her boy was also on brand — when Larry was a young man, she implored him to see a therapist. She even offered to pay, according to a Vulture profile. “My mother was terribly worried about him,” says Larry’s older brother Ken. He says she didn’t believe her younger son was cut out for a comedy career, begging him, “Larry, why don’t you get a job with the Board of Education? You’ll have a pension and be taken care of. What are you doing this for? Are you crazy?”
I won’t judge David’s sanity or career choices but no therapist has cured the comic of his disdain for Halloween rituals. “Trick-or-treating: It’s stupid,” he told Fallon. “You’re dealing with strangers all over the place. Every apartment is a stranger. It’s rude to bang on someone’s door. It’s stupid.”
“And at 12 years old,” Fallon boggled, “you thought this?”
“Yeah, I knew that at 12,” David kvetched. “I don’t want to see all those people. And then the costume? The costume! You got to put a costume on? Come on.”
The real question is: How wasn’t the newspaper letter turned into a Seinfeld plot for George and Estelle Costanza?