Parenting & Family Quote by Dave Foley

There is a sneaky gravity hiding inside Foley's casual phrasing: "carry around" makes the identity sound less like a trophy and more like a piece of gear you never quite take off. Coming from a comedian, it's a telling choice. Comics are supposed to move on to the next bit, the next reinvention; Foley is admitting that some eras don't get filed away, they get worn.

The specific intent here is less nostalgia than clarification. Foley isn't merely reminiscing about The Kids in the Hall; he's staking a claim about what the work did to them. "As part of our identity" frames the troupe not as a past job but as a formative social unit, like a hometown or a family system. The subtext is that public perception and private self-understanding have fused: once the audience has branded you as a "Kid", the label becomes a mirror you keep catching yourself in, even decades later.

Context matters because Kids in the Hall was never just sketch comedy. It was a sensibility: anti-macho, gender-bending, proudly weird, Canadian in a way that didn't apologize for being outside the American comedy pipeline. That kind of cultural footprint becomes sticky. Foley's "now" does quiet work, suggesting middle age, changing careers, industry churn, and the awkward truth that success can fossilize you. It's also collective language: "we" and "ourselves" signal loyalty, but also the burden of a shared legacy. The line reads like a gentle refusal to "move on" on command, and an acknowledgment that certain creative identities are less a chapter than a permanent accent.