Years ago, some friends came over. They wanted to annoy me. They did that now and then. They would come up with some plan, something they thought would get my goat. Then they'd come over and started talking to me, telling me something that was supposed to bother me.
On this occasion, they came over and told me that Gary Coleman was more successful than me even though I was five years older than him.
"Pretty much everybody is more successful that me," I said. "He was more successful than me when he was six."
They hung around for a while and then went away disappointed. I don't know why they thought that would bother me.
And today I heard the news that Gary Coleman had died at age 42.
I can't think of a child star who was exploited worse than he was. He said he wouldn't wish the first fifteen years of his life on his worse enemy. The last twenty-seven years were no picnic either.
He had health problems all his life. He was cruelly exploited by everyone involved in his career, including his own parents who had adopted him as a baby. They would lecture him----he was spending too much on his model trains----while they lived off his labor.
The first time I saw him on TV that I remember was on Fernwood Tonight. A lot of people appeared on that show who went on to bigger things. Robin Williams, Jim Varney. Even the children. There was Gary Coleman playing Martin Mull's son. There was Corey Feldman and Noah Hathaway. Coleman was at ease on the show. Completely natural. He sat on Martin Mull's lap, and Mull made a quip about how the audience couldn't see him.
"You want me to move?" Coleman said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86X3usshQBA
Well, that's a shame. He deserved so much better than he got.
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