Over the years, I learned that in my career, unlike in life, sometimes my wheelchair is its own automatic door opener. I was able to win the OWN competition by applying one simple principle: be funny, and admit you suck before anyone else can call you out on it. In other words, make the narrative of your failure a comedy.

As my friend said to me, when you have children, typically in a second marriage, when you're older and you get married again to a woman who would have children, you must always remember that you make sure the children attend a college where the commencement ceremonies are held in a facility with a wheelchair accessible ramp.

I did a show in Germany, and some kid - he was disabled - he was actually in a wheelchair, and he came out to my show, and he couldn't get across to me what he was trying to say, and you could see that he was frustrated because he couldn't fully express himself, and I just felt like, 'Wow, he's just really passionate about me.'

I'd never seen my father stand up. As far as I can remember, my father was always in a wheelchair. I always remembered that. And I remember my first basketball game, ever, he rolls into the gym, he stays by the door and he watches me play. And that was the only game he ever saw me play because he passed away shortly after that.

As we walked through the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I pushed my grandfather in a wheelchair he had reluctantly agreed to sit in. He is a proud man who also knows that his knees aren't what they once were - that years of high school and college football had long accelerated the deterioration of his aging joints.

When I got home from hospital, and I was in a wheelchair in a plaster body cast, an aeroplane flew over. And I thought to myself, 'Well, if I can't walk, then I might as well fly.' And I was lifted into the aeroplane for the first time. And when I took the controls of the aeroplane, I knew this was something I could do. I thought, 'I can fly.'

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