Name: Stephen Wilson Jr. Remembers His Dad
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T18:28:07.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Stephen Wilson Jr. Remembers His Dad' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Stephen Wilson Jr. Remembers His Dad' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-13. Transcript available.

Stephen Wilson Jr. Remembers His Dad

Oh, there's a beautiful group right there, you guys' kids, huh?
That's my dad and his three little ones, and that's me.
That you on the bottom left there, kind of in the middle?
Yeah, in the middle, yeah.
And who's that dime on his lap, huh?
And I mean that respectfully, because it's a child.
Who's that beautiful young lady?
Yeah, that's my little sister, Lacey J.
Lacey J?
Lacey J.
Named after Lacey J Dalton, another country singer.
But yeah, she's his little girl, and she is beautiful, and she's a beautiful
person in general.
She's really kept our whole family.
Me and my brother right there, we're like Irish twins.
We're only like a year and a few months apart, so we grew up beating the hell
out of each other.
We were both boxers.
My dad right there, in this picture, he had just won the Golden Globes for like
the third or fourth time in a row.
And, you know, he was probably just running over to like Olin Mills or
somewhere at Walmart and grabbing this picture real quick.
So just so like, just that there's proof that we existed and proof that he did
this.
And I always find it wild that he had time to even snap that picture amidst his
life.
It was so crazy at the time.
For a dad to put that together, that didn't say, you know, that wasn't really
the dad world.
So he was a single dad raising you guys?
Yeah, he was driving a bus in the morning and then working at a body shop and
training to be a boxer.
He was wanting to be a pro boxer, but a lot of things, you know, he had to
really kind of focus on being a dad and kind of had to put his boxing career.
Because he really had a very promising career ahead of him.
And so a lot of my dreams, I live kind of, you know, for him and myself,
because he put a lot of his dreams on the back burner to raise me.
Like, and he also created me.
So like he, like he kind of had to do that.
Right.
You know, like, so, but, you know, a lot of people don't take that
responsibility.
And when I see that picture, I have like, like you said, a memory.
Well, he either got the, he's got great dimples or somebody caught him with two
good books.
No, yeah, he's got great dimples.
He does.
Okay, I was going to guess.
My little sister has the same ones.
And, but yeah, I see that guy right there.
And about a year from that picture, he would have been curling my little sister's
hair and getting her ready for kindergarten.
And, and even though his eyes were swollen shut from sparring the night before,
I have like distinct memories of him, like getting her ready for school and
being like a dad to a very young little girl, like, and like, you know, crimping
her hair and curling it.
And, you know, being, being a dad, also doing feminine things, like, because
there was no one to do the feminine thing.
So he was like, oh, I got to be dad.
And he was really good and he knew how to do the dude, the dad dude part.
Like he had me and my brother boxing every night and we were hunting and
fishing and doing all the dude things.
But he had also had to be a dad to a little girl.
That was like the light of his life.
Wow.
That was like quite the responsibility.
And I look back on that and I have, like, like I said, just such a distinct
memory of him curling her hair, like while morning cartoons are playing right
before we got on the school bus.
And yeah, he was quite the dude.
What was his name?
Steven Wilson.
Oh, he was senior.
Yes.
You just never know.
Sometimes they'll throw a junior on somebody just because they don't know what's
going on.
Yeah.
You know, or they're just a NASCAR fan.
They'll tack it onto the back of their kid's name.
Yeah, I can pick that, like a donkey tail.
They just put it on there like a junior.
Like, yeah, we'll pin the tail on this child, you know.
No, I'm very much a junior.
It's very much a thing in boxing, especially like, you know, I joke around that,
you know, my, you know, my dad, you know, he was, he was named after a martyr
in the Bible.
Like, my grandmother named him after a guy that was, had rocks thrown at him
until he died in the Bible.
Steven with a pH, by the way, and, which makes a lot of sense because I'm
pretty sure my dad was stoned when I was born.
Was he?
That's the joke.
Oh, the pH level of his brain was probably weed, probably, and it might have
been plus 40 then.
Depends on if he was on some serious gas or not.
He did like, perhaps the, the country cabbage.
One thing you said that was interesting a little bit ago was you said, um, that
your dad, like your dad was a boxer and he did these things.
And then sometimes you're living out some of your dad's dreams.
Yeah.
Um, and I, I find that to be interesting that, uh, that we feel like that as
sons or that some sons feel that way.
Yeah.
And then also that some dads will make sacrifices like you're saying, like, you
know, and it wasn't like it was his choice that he made, you know, it wasn't
like a sacrifice, but sometimes even with choices, then come sacrifices that
you don't see.
And then you have to make another choice then as to what do I do here.
Um, but that like, by giving, by giving birth to a son, by having an offspring,
you are creating something that can go the next leg.
Almost like it's a, uh, one of those races where they pass the baton.
What is that called?
I think a baton race.
Yeah.
A baton race.
And yeah.
So, yeah, it's not hard.
It's not as hard as it seems.
I'm not sure.
It may not be called that.
It may be something, something, uh, something way more complex.
It is a baton, a relay race.
Baton race, a relay race.
Um, but it's like, I can, this is as far as I can get and let me put this into
you with, but then it's interesting as the next runner, as the next generation
is, what do I like?
How much do I owe to this previous generation to carry on their dream?
Do I owe anything?
You know, what does it mean to be a son?
Like all those things kind of were popping into my head as you were saying that.
Um, a generational relay race is not something I've put, you know, to thought
regarding all that, but that, that is very, very,
very accurate, um, observation there.
Because you, when you see a relay race, like the first runner or whatever, the
runner before you, the runners before you, like dictate how fast you're going
to run and they dictate your position in the, in the race.
Yeah.
So, like if they're running with everything they got, well, then you're only
like doing a disservice to their effort by not running with everything you got.
Right.
And so, yeah, that, that baton becomes something bigger than just this thing
you're holding in your hand.
It's like the, the sum of all their efforts.
Yeah.
And, uh, you know.
Yeah.
And I think we used to hear a lot more, I think when families, and this is a
hypothetical, but when families seemed closer and, uh, and we needed low, more
entertainment from our fathers and forefathers.
And we got lower passed down and family history when there was more
storytelling, when you couldn't get as much storytelling from like phones and
television and stuff as we can in the past few generations.
But when it came from like those, uh, the predecessors of ours and our forefathers
and mothers that, that kind of stuff, it like beat inside of us like a drum,
you know?
Um, yeah.
What, what kind of, did you feel a pressure like, um, and did something happen?
Your father passed away?
Yeah.
He passed away seven years ago at the age of 59.
And, um, it happened, yeah, he was very young and, um, it was, um, a sudden
thing and it was, was he sick?
Uh, well, he had like this pulmonary, uh, fibrosis thing that was starting, but
he ended up dying of a pulmonary embolism, like a, a blood clot in his lungs.
And, uh, so, um, yeah, it was, it was a very sudden thing that I don't think
anybody really expected.
And, um.
He was living in Indiana?
He was living in Southern Indiana and, um, he was, you know, he was, you know,
doing quite well and, and like, you know, everything kind of changed in about
six months.
And then, um, he, he, you know, suddenly this, this embolism showed up and I
tried to get there because he, it was, his, his body was like shutting down.
What do you mean?
So an embolism, can you bring it up just so I know, Trevin, sorry to interrupt
you, Stephen.
No, I don't.
I'm just like, sometimes I, I've let information fly.
And I don't know what it is.
An embolism, a pulmonary embolism is a blood clot that travels to and blocks an
artery in the lungs, cutting off normal blood flow and oxygen exchange and
creating a potentially life-threatening emergency.
So had this been happening for a while and then it got bad?
Yeah.
And, um, so he'd had some, obviously some things going on that he never knew
was happening.
And, um, and then, yeah, it got to that life-threatening emergency point.
And then there is a point where they can only do so much.
Um, and, you know, he was a bit of a cowboy and, you know, those kind of
classic dudes that don't want to go to the doctor and I'll tough it out kind of
thing.
I'm sure there was a lot of that mentality going into it.
Also, there was poor healthcare, you know, that's, he was a victim of the
American healthcare system too in that regard.
I won't get into all that.
But, um, but yeah, like that was, that was a big part of it.
Um, we've talked, we've talked about that a lot over the years.
It's a nightmare and the stress they put people through trying to deal with
their own taking care of themselves.
It's like, yeah, it's a nightmare, especially at his age at 59, he was starting
to feel like, uh, you're just like a forgotten human.
They don't, you know, like, you know, they don't really want to take care of
you.
They want to do everything but that, like you got to fight tooth and nail to
take care of yourself in that, at least where he was at that time.
And, uh, yeah, I, I got a, a really, um, panicked call from my sister that
morning and said, you need to get here like now.
Like dad is very sick and we don't know what's happening.
And they rushed him to the emergency room and, um, I jumped in my car and sped
up there and I said goodbye to him in the middle of Kentucky on the side of I-65
on an iPhone 8 on the side of a highway.
And, um, that was-
Pulled over to make it quieter?
Yeah.
And just so I didn't lose signal, I was so worried that, cause, you know, the
middle of Kentucky is the middle of nowhere and, like, what if I dropped the
call?
Like, yeah.
And, um, you know, there was, so I just pulled over just, I mean, it was insane.
I just, the, the sound of like semis flying by me at like 90 miles an hour, but
literally being in a, I felt like I was in a bubble, like not like the world
was, like the world stopped around me in that little car.
Like, a, a semi could have taken the side of that car off, I wouldn't even had
known it or, you know, I would have just, I was in a state of absolute shock
and, and horror.
It was a very traumatizing experience.
And you were on a FaceTime call?
No, I was just on a video, or a normal phone call.
Um, was he able to speak to you?
He was, and he, uh...
Did he know that it could be, like, his last moment?
He knew, he knew he was dying.
Is this bothering you by asking you this?
No, I, I talk about it a lot on stage.
I kind of relive it every night, and, um, that's been a, a challenge for me,
like, mentally, kind of, but it's been, but it's also been, like, the beautiful
part of unpacking trauma and grief, because, you know, I'm not, like, our, our
music, like, really, um, it, it finds the grieving.
And I think it's, it's important for me to grieve as well.
Um, like, I, I, I, I go through grief every night, and, uh, but, you know, um,
he was such a gangster in that moment.
He knew he had maybe 90 seconds left on this earth.
He knew he was going, not just going, but going fast.
He even told me, he's like, I'm, I'm going, Steven, and, uh, um, sorry.
Um, but, yeah, he was, uh, he was so calm about it.
Um, he said, everything's going to be okay.
Oh.
That was his first thing he said, like,