Just the Twelve of Us

Living with five roommates is a breeze for Paul G. Hamm ’07. After all, his Hurlbut suite is quiet compared to where he comes from. As the seventh of 12 children who range from 4 to 26 years old, Hamm doesn’t see the chaos portrayed in Steve Martin’s Cheaper By the Dozen as particularly unusual. “I couldn’t imagine being an only child, or even one of three or four. I wouldn’t be who I am today,” he says.

Slouched in his chair, feet perched on the seats in front of him, the amiable Hamm watches actors Hilary Duff and Tom Welling struggle with the convoluted family politics that are all too familiar for him. “Everything is multiplied. If two of us start fighting, everyone takes sides.”

The film reminds Hamm of his Maryland home: constant mayhem. He leans forward in his seat, his hands cupping a broad smile. “Oh man, lots of fighting for the bathroom,” Hamm responds to a scene. He laughs, “Lots of wrong name calling.” A scene in which the family uses an assembly line to prepare breakfast rings particularly true. “That’s awesome!” he shouts across Loews Boston Common. “We do that all the time!”

Accommodating an army of children is a constant challenge for Hamm’s family. Pointing to the screen, he recalls, “We had a 15 passenger van, bigger than [the van on the screen]. Shit! Our house is definitely not as big as that.” In diplomatic affairs, he says age generally took precedence over all else. “The oldest one at the moment would get to ride shotgun, etc. But even then, you never know who’s going to be the oldest at any given time.”

On a campus saturated with diversity, Hamm initially tried to downplay his unique background. But twelve siblings proved impossible to hide. “After a month of telling so many stories about this brother and that sister, my roommates finally were like ‘How many siblings do you have?’” Though 12 kids may be, as the movie says, an “insane” number, in the end it proves to be twelve times the fun.

—B.M. Schwartz