Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party

W
HITE
H
ALL
P
RESS

Powder Springs, Georgia

by
Victoria Jackson

contributing writer: James M. Jackson (brother)

© Copyright 2012 by White Hall Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior, written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Published by:

White Hall Press

3150-A Florence Road, Suite 2

Powder Springs, GA 30127–5385

www.WhiteHallPress.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quoted from the N
EW
A
MERICAN
S
TANDARD
B
IBLE
^®
, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Printed in the United States of America.

Text design by Justus Stout and Michael Minkoff, Jr.

Cover design by Joseph Darnell

Front Cover photo by David Perry ‹
DavidPerryStudio.com
›

Back Cover photo by Brian Leighty ‹
LeightyPhotography.com
›

ISBN: 978-1-4675-0256-6

“Always dress better than the audience.”

–Jim Jackson (Dad)

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts…

–William Shakespeare

Roles

Patient

Gymnast

Ingenue

Actress

Star

Celebrity

Lover

Housewife

Activist

Singer

Journalist

Missionary

Epiloguer

Credits

Appendices

Acknowledgments

. . . the joy of the L
ORD
is my strength.

–Nehemiah 8:10

Patient

First, you are a WANNA-BE

By having a dream or two.

You try and fail and try and fail

’Til wondrously, your dream comes true.

Then you are a BEING, in all its grace and glory.

Until a new dream comes along,

And you start another story,

You’re a HAS-BEEN.

I
slit my wrist. Blood oozes from the wound. I think I see a bone. I don’t feel pain. I must be in shock. Thirty years in show business couldn’t kill me, but domestic bliss just might.

I stare at my wrist. Could this really kill me? I had taken two slender-stemmed wine glasses out of the dishwasher, then tripped on the open door and fell into the counter. It’s noon. My three-year-old is chattering away and Barney is singing, “I Love You” on TV to the tune of “This Old Man”—a rip off. I’m in a wrinkled t-shirt. Child is in food-stained pajamas. Older child is at school. Daddy is in the sky, piloting his police helicopter. I don’t think the lips of the gash will go back together by themselves. I wrap a dirty kitchen towel around the dripping wound and put some shorts on with one hand. I’m worried now.

I drive myself to the ER. The blasé secretary asks for lots of information, and then she recognizes me—a TV star, trapped in the suburbs with a slit wrist. She smacks her gum, raises an eyebrow, and looks at my wrist suspiciously. “How’d it happen?” she asks smugly.

Suddenly, I realize that I may never be able to do a handstand again. My handstand. The trick my dad taught me. The one trick I could do better than anyone else. The trick that got me a college scholarship. The trick that made Johnny Crawford notice me and give me a one-way ticket to Hollywood. The trick that got me
The Gap
commercial, and the
Mitsubishi
commercial. The trick that kept me from starving as a struggling actress. The trick that got me on Johnny Carson and launched my showbusiness career. The trick that got me noticed on
Saturday Night Live
. The trick. The trick may be gone forever.

Without the trick, who am I?

I’m lying flat on a gurney, holding my arm up, alone in a hallway with my three-year-old who is spinning on a swivel chair in her dirty clothes. We look like poor white trash. It’s not like I had time to arrange our outfits for the hospital excursion today. Besides, I only had one hand. A nurse’s aide comes up to chat. She asks me what Chevy Chase is really like. No one seems to care that I’m bleeding. She lazily wraps some gauze around my wound, takes my temperature, and leaves.

Another nurse loans me her cell phone. Husband shouts over the
phfft-phfft-phfft
of his chopper blades, “You’re where?! What did you do now?!” He sounds worried. That’s romantic. He’s on his way.

Maybe now he’ll move to LA. Did I do this on purpose? No. But, it
is
very symbolic.

I’m handed a paper cup with a pill in it and another with water. The nurse pulls up a chair and starts asking me the same ten questions: “Weren’t you on
SNL
?” “How did you get on there?” “Didn’t you stand on your head?” “How do you do that?” “Who was your favorite host?” “What was your favorite skit?” “Do you hang out with your old cast members?” “Why did you leave
SNL
?” “Are you going to go back?” “Is that your real voice?”

Twenty years later, I’m still trapped in Florida, the swamp. Occasional jaunts to LA keep me sane. My children are almost grown. My husband can almost retire. I’m a Grandmother. And I’m still answering the same ten questions about
SNL
. Except now, the mainstream media are doing “hit pieces” on me because I’m a Tea Party lady. Hate mail litters my inbox,
MSNBC
calls me the “most hated person in the world,” and Howard Stern says I’m so fat it looks like “I ate Victoria Jackson.” That one’s pretty funny, actually.