Текст книги "Daddy, Stop Talking! And Other Things My Kids Want but Won't Be Getting"

Автор книги: Adam Carolla

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Natalia could take your last nerve and work it like Sugar Ray Robinson working a speed-bag. We had a nice go ’round about a trip to the American Girl doll store just recently. She wanted to go, I told her I had to work that night and the one in Hollywood was too far away. She told me to go online and see if there was one in the Pasadena area, since it was closer to home. I actually did that, and there wasn’t. The closest one was in Glendale, which was nearer than Hollywood, but still too far to make it back on time for me to get to work. Before I knew it, she had dragged me into the later rounds. I was punchy and was playing her game. So I said, “Daddy has to work tonight, but we can go next weekend.” She said “But…” and knowing I was on my heels and she could knock me out with one good emotional haymaker, I jumped in with, “I said no and the answer is no.”

Actual note from Natalia’s door (cross-out courtesy of Sonny)

Of course, she then went and told Lynette who sat me down later to say, “When you raise your voice to Natalia, it upsets her.” I told Lynette I’ve only done it four times in Natalia’s eight years on the planet. Lynette paused and said, “True… but it really upsets her.” To which I replied, “Yes, but she plays us both like a fucking fiddle and I’m sure she’s telling you this so you’ll give me a talking-to so I won’t do it anymore, but every time I have raised my voice it has been justified.” So if she can manipulate Mom, I’m sure that, as her therapist, you’re hearing a lot about her dad the rage-aholic, too. To set the record straight, I’ve shouted at her maybe four times in the first eight years of her life. That’s twice per presidential term. Hardly abuse.

It wasn’t just Natalia, Sonny got in on the action, too, in terms of destroying Daddy’s will to live. A few years ago, we were having a Super Bowl party and I attempted to enlist the kids to help prep the house a little bit. I had a big cooler in the courtyard, an old-style Coca-Cola cooler like you’d see in a country store. We had a bunch of old sodas in there that needed to be taken out so that we could put some fresh beers in. So I asked the kids to clean it out. It became a more protracted argument than Roe v. Wade. It was like I had asked them to drag their own crucifix up a mountain before I nailed them on it. They fought me at every turn. I had to break it down step by step, “Open the cooler, take them out, put them on the table.” “But, Dad, they’re sharp.” There were no broken bottles or cut-up cans. I wasn’t asking them to dip their hands in broken glass, like in Kickboxer. I just wanted them to take some old faded soda cans out of a cooler. But we went from Super Bowl XLVII to XLVIII by the time we were done arguing, and I had to use the dad voice again. Through clenched teeth, I said, “Just do it because I said so.”

Would I love to be able to lay down one well-placed ass whack with a flip-flop? Sure. One flip-flop shot over the bow to let them know that the next step after the dad voice is not going to be good. Instead, I use disappointment as my weapon. Having them in fear of me going out to the backyard and pulling a branch off a tree and whacking them in the ass with it might have gotten me the results I want short term but long term it’s going to end with my kids resenting me, and them taking out their anger on society and themselves. And talking shit about me to you, therapist reading this. But if they fear disappointing me, they’ll make good decisions and that momentum will carry them into a good life.

Plus, I don’t want the kids taken away. My mom was a product of the system and is still dealing with it, and, in a way, I’m still dealing with it. Having your kids taken away by the government and sent to live in foster care or with relatives does way more damage than any wrong they could do that would warrant them getting “whooped.” Again, not pointing fingers at any particular culture, because I don’t feel like being called a racist by the Huffington Post, but there’s a lot of “I was raised by my grandmother” happening in particular communities, and there’s also a shitload of crime in those communities. The good news is that immature parents who have their kids taken away were usually raised by young parents themselves. So the grandma those kids end up with usually just celebrated her thirty-first birthday.

Let me say two things about foster kids. First, we need a better name for this. It’s too common a last name. There’s probably a confusing “Who’s on First?” situation on the first day of school for kids whose last name is actually Foster. I think we could come up with a nicer term, like they did when they started calling used cars “pre-owned.” Maybe we could swap “foster kid” for “pre-parented.”

Second, I’m torn on foster parents. There’s a part of me that thinks they are saints for taking in all those kids who need homes. Those kids are usually so emotionally damaged that they end up doing a bunch of literal damage to those foster homes. But, at the same time, I’m slightly suspicious of the kind of person who wants to have a house full of traumatized and abandoned kids. I’m sure there’s at the very least some religious proselytizing going on or, at worst, some continued abuse. I have two kids whom I share genes with and I want to strangle them sometimes. I can’t imagine what would happen if some troubled kid whom I met two days ago was in my house messing with my shit and shouting, “You’re not my dad!”

Father Abuse

If anything, dear therapist, I was the one who was abused by my kids. That story with the headphones and screaming in my face was not a one-time thing. Natalia always messed with me when I was exercising. One time, I was doing a headstand and she just came in and pushed me over and ran out of the room, laughing, as I came down like a tipped cow.

Our nights of wrestling became more aggressive as she got older, too. Even today, at age eight, we still play the game where Natalia runs off the bed and I catch her. But now, a lot of times, she’s pulling some WWE moves on me. As I’m catching her, I’m also catching some elbows to the noggin. One time, I caught her and she just slapped me in the face for no reason. That was when Daddy said, “No mas,” and called it a night.

And Natalia tricked me into the abuse. There was a period when, every time I would come home, she’d say, “Daddy, I want a huggy.” And of course I’d fall for it. At which point, she’d grab the hat off my head, run squealing into the kitchen, and throw it on top of the upper cabinets. Our kitchen has nine-foot ceilings, but the top of the cabinets are at the eight-foot mark and then there’s two inches of crown molding, so once it was up there, it was nearly impossible to retrieve.

This happened multiple times before I laid down the law and said, “You’re getting my hat.” She stood on top of the counter but couldn’t reach, so I put her butt on my shoulder, and she was able to reach back and grab it. She fished it out, showed it to me, giving me just enough time to say thank you, and then tossed it on top of the fridge, which is deeper, so it was even harder to retrieve.

Luckily, this whole thing backfired on her one day. We went through the usual dance of the fake-out hug, her grabbing my Rams beanie and running away. To his credit, Sonny would usually try to stop her, but she’d throw him down and break away like Jim Brown running over a white defensive back. Then I’d try to dive and stop her, but she typically had too much of a head start. On this particular night, she slid on her socks on the wooden kitchen floor, and bonked her head. Then she had that moment all kids have when they fall, that few seconds that feel like forever, when they decide whether they’re hurt. So I jumped in and said, “You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine. It just made a loud noise.”

Then I saw Lynette at the kitchen entrance, making what I call the “Triple Mommy Face.” The super-concerned, “Are you okay, sweetie?” look. I was in the middle of my eighty-fifth “You’re okay,” when Natalia just collapsed in a heap of tears. I swear Lynette and I could have pulled it off if we were on the same page.

Natalia figured out early that it was funny to fuck with me. When she was about fourteen months old she learned to say no. And she would shake her head so vigorously when saying no to any request I made that she would fall over. She would hold a ball and when I’d reach for it, she’d pull it back and say “no” so hard she’d literally fall out of her chair. Who taught her this? That’s what I want to know. That terrible twos period when kids love to say no is a real burner. It’ll take the life out of you. I think all parents should get on the same page and agree not to say “no” in front of their kids until their eleventh birthday. It’s part of my campaign: “Just Don’t Say No.”

Most days, I’m still asleep when the kids go to school. And on those days Sonny would come in and give me a nice kiss on the lips and say, “Goodbye, Father,” and head off. (And, for the record, Sonny decided to call me “Father” instead of “Dad” without any prompting or coaching. I have no idea where he got it, but I’ve gotta admit I love the old-school flair.) Then, moments after Sonny’s sweet goodbye, I’d feel a cold flat-palm slap on my forehead from Natalia. She’d seriously just come in and smack me in the head, like I was in a commercial in which I forgot to have a V-8. That’s where she was at. Slapping the old man in his sleep.

We actually instituted a points system in the house for doing chores and being good. Five points equals a dollar. So the first time I experienced Natalia giving me an actual kiss goodbye, it was immediately followed by her shouting down the hallway, “That’s two points, Mommy. Where’s my dollar?”

That one didn’t stick. I guess she figured out that it was worth more than a buck to fuck with me. Now when I leave, Sonny gives me the big sloppy kiss on the lips and Natalia leans in, but then slides up to my forehead and laughs.

She’s quite the actress. On one of our wrestling nights, she broke down in tears. I thought I had been too rough. But when I went close to check out if she was okay, she punched me in the stomach.

The truth is, she’s just not that into me. One night, Lynette popped out to pick up some food. Meanwhile, I was upstairs skipping rope. The kids were downstairs in the kitchen watching television. I wrapped up my rope and walked downstairs into the kitchen. As I turned the corner the floor creaked. Natalia hopped up from her chair, elated, and shouted, “Mommee… ughh.” A moment of pure, uncut joy followed by a crash of disappointment. Lynette wasn’t out of town, she was just out running errands. And in this case Natalia wasn’t fucking with me. She was deflated. She was genuinely crushed to see me, instead of Lynette. She wordlessly sat down, turned around and got back to WaWa Wubzy.

With Natalia you have to earn her affection. The most she’s ever interested in me is when I’m temporarily off the C-list and inching towards the B-list or hanging out with the A-list. She was really into Daddy when he took her to the premiere of Wreck-It Ralph, or when she found out that I was doing the Tonight Show on the same night as Simon Cowell because she’s into One Direction. I’m not fucking around. My relationship with Natalia significantly improved when Catch a Contractor started airing. It went from flying beanies and knees in the groin to snuggle time on the couch to watch Daddy on television.

If it seems like I’m beating up on Natalia here, it’s because chicks hold grudges and I need to set the record straight. My sister couldn’t tell you what century the Civil War took place in or who the first president was, but when it comes to the times my dad ignored her or disapproved of a boyfriend, she’s Ken fucking Burns. Girl brains are like computer hard drives that are so full of bad memories and resentment that they can’t actually compute. If chicks applied their elephant memory to actual history, rather than the history of the times Dad disappointed them, they’d all have masters’ degrees.

I can just imagine the stuff a twenty-eight-year-old Natalia is telling you in therapy. I’m sure I know one of them. My favorite time of the year isn’t Christmas; it’s the Coronado Speed Festival. That trek 125 miles south of Los Angeles, near San Diego, is my pilgrimage to Mecca. The past two years I took Sonny with me. I made him my pit crew, working on the car together beforehand, letting him do unimportant stuff like hand me tools and spraying down and wiping the fenders with a rag. We drove down together, stayed in the hotel together and even slept in the same bed. It was a real father-son bonding trip. He cherished it and was counting the days to the next one.

For the record, I tried to take Natalia in 2014. I wanted her to have as much fun as Sonny had. She didn’t want to go. I’m pretty sure she said no just to fuck with me. Anyway, Sonny will be telling his therapist, “Father worked very hard and would always try to make time for me.” Meanwhile, Natalia will be saying, “That asshole was never home, he was always working and when he did have time he would spend it with Sonny.”

I know it probably feels like I’m doing an unfair amount of complaining about Natalia, but the reality is that Sonny was just easier to deal with as a kid. I’ve always said Natalia was like raising three kids, while Sonny was like raising one old cat. She was just more energetic and she drove Sonny nuts, too. He was like a Labrador trying to take a nap and she was a caffeinated Chihuahua bouncing around nipping on his ears.

In fact, for this book, I did a little memory refreshing and listened to the radio show from the couple days around their birth. Two days after they were born I said, “The boy is a little quieter than the girl… it could all change… but at this point the boy is a little quieter.” It never changed.

Natalia was always more active and was the first to walk, at just eleven months old. She was long, lean and graceful, while Sonny was shaped like a butt plug. I remember she balanced herself on the edge of the couch, then took three or four tentative steps while holding the cushions before falling into my arms. But if I stood too far she wouldn’t go to me, and if I were too close, she wouldn’t bother. Enter the string cheese. There isn’t a person or a creature on the planet that doesn’t love string cheese. Even dogs love it. Someone with full-blown leprosy could hand me a piece of string cheese and I’d eat it. I thought this would be a good motivator and gave her a taste. Then I stepped back three paces from the sofa. Reaching out for the string cheese, she kept going and quickly put together a full twenty steps. I was so proud of my little girl. Not only did she have Daddy’s sense of balance, she wasn’t even a year old and understood how capitalism works. (Or at least drug dealing. “Here’s a taste, but the rest will cost you.”) But while I was tempting Natalia with mozzarella, Sonny was just rolling around crapping himself. So I knew, early and often, that Natalia was going to be more energetic and thus harder to handle.

That could be a good thing. I’m glad she has a motor. It didn’t make for an easy parenting experience, but it probably means a bright future for my little girl. Maybe Sonny’s a deadbeat asshole on government assistance now, and Natalia is a multitasking millionaire philanthropist opening schools for girls in Darfur.

And, credit where credit is due, things actually improved quite a bit as Natalia got older. When I wrote this letter, she was eight and I can honestly say that for the past year things have been quite good. I’m sure you, Mr. or Ms. Therapist, know that sometimes the best way to fix a relationship is to ease off a bit. It’s like when I do some of my races and I start to go into a skid. The instinct is to grab the wheel and yank it in the opposite direction. The truth is that if you just let go a little bit, the car will pretty much right itself. If you jerk the wheel in the opposite direction, you make things worse. Well, that’s what I did to address a lot of the abuse I took from Natalia. I just gave it some space and let her outgrow it. I didn’t hover and I didn’t shout back. That’s an ego thing, a parent struggling for control because they aren’t confident. I was. I knew it would get better, and it did.

I love Natalia; I just have to set the record straight because she has a history of misinterpreting or just flat-out lying about Daddy.

For example, after our Lincoln-Douglas debates about the EzyRoller, I tried to make it right before she left the house. I came up behind her before she walked out and gave her a hug from behind. She shouted, “You hurt me!” I was just squeezing her from behind and trying to kiss her on the forehead and later she told Lynette I was “choking” her.

One summer afternoon, I took her to the beach in Malibu. This is one of the most beautiful, and thus most expensive, spots on earth. We literally walked past Madonna’s and Cher’s houses to get to the sand. We were walking around looking at tidal pools and starfish. We spotted a small crab that had been beached and looked like it was struggling. To role model a little humanitarianism, I tried to save the crab. I dumped some bottled water on it to help it get back to the water. But in that process I accidentally turned it over on its back. So I gingerly flipped it right again and sent it on its way.

When we got home that night, I was in the bathroom and I heard Natalia down the hall talking to Lynette and her friend recapping the day. “Daddy found a crab,” she said. Lynette replied, “Did he? That’s cool.” Natalia said back, “Yeah, he killed it.” Lynette was horrified. So for the record, I’m not some sociopath who tortures animals. I dumped three bucks worth of Evian on it to save the fucking thing. But I’m sure Natalia’s claiming to you that I waterboarded it.

Her most classic lie was much earlier in her life. When the kids were two years old, I’d come home from work and pick them up. I’d grab Sonny and give him a big hug and bounce him around. Then when I would reach for Natalia she would say, “Poo-poos, Daddy,” meaning that she had a full diaper or was about to shit herself. It wasn’t time to squeeze her like the world’s worst toothpaste tube. But after about twenty-six times, I caught on and checked her. Nothing. She had figured out that Daddy doesn’t do diapers, and conjured a way to get out of my hugging her.

The Straight Poop About Poop

Since we’re on the topic, I know a little about Freud and the whole anal fixation thing and that it’s all about potty training. So let me give you the embarrassing details about my kids and their bowels.

First off, kid poop is weird. It’s not solid. It looks like you left guacamole out on the counter for three days. Most times. But other times, as was the case with Natalia, it would be these hard, dusty, dry pellets. At a certain point when she was a toddler, her shit looked like something a dung beetle would roll around. I was wondering if she was just eating flour.

When the kids were first born Lynette would say, “You’re going to have to change diapers.” To which I replied, “Nope, payback’s a bitch. I’ve been busting my ass for the first ten years of our relationship while you’ve been eating bon-bons. Time to step up.” She shot back, “Why, because you’re some sort of celebrity?” I said, “Damn straight. I’ve been celebritying for the past ten years to pay for the house the diapers are in and the in-vitro that made the little shit machines in the first place. I’ve done my part.”

I can count the number of number twos I’ve cleaned on one hand. I don’t have that gene. I’m uncomfortable with the whole process. I don’t like seeing my daughter’s chest, never mind down in lady-town. You’ve got to take that wipe and get in there to clean the girl parts. Not happening. And with the boys, you’ve got to clean around the ding-a-ling and sack. A little kid sack looks like a rabbit’s brain or something. It’s like trying to clean a golf ball. Shouldn’t you just be able to dip them in something? Can’t we get My First Bidet out to market?

There were only a few times when I was alone with them when they were babies, so there were only a few diaper-tunities anyway. I remember one night that Lynette was out and it was all me, Mr. Mom. They were crying and I thought, just let them be. I knew I fed them and that they weren’t being consumed by sewer rats. But they were unrelenting. I was up and down all night. Sonny used to make a face like a bad Mexican actor before he’d cry, so once I caught on to his tell, I’d blow in his face to confuse him out of it, like a dog hanging his head out the window. It interrupted his thought process and shut down the waterworks. It wasn’t effective on Natalia. I had to hang out in their room all night. I couldn’t leave or they’d cry. I’d try to sneak out but as soon as they figured out I wasn’t around, they’d start wailing again.

Another night, Lynette and the gals were going out to see the Beastie Boys, and before they left I was given the condescending rundown: “Put on the quiet music,” “Put on the blankie,” “As they nod off, move them from the daybed into the crib.” While Lynette was getting ready, Natalia started making noises, like preverbal conversation cooing kind of sounds. Sonny, meanwhile, was crying like a stuck pig. I thought the difference was interesting and funny and wanted to play it on the morning radio show the next day. I grabbed a camera and was videotaping them to capture the audio when Lynette walked in. In full “You idiot” tone, she said, “Why are you videotaping them? Just pick them up.” I was already off to a bad start.

While Lynette was listening to the B-boys do “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” the kids had actually gone to sleep on their daybed. I decided that they were both okay and if I attempted to move them to the crib, I’d end up waking them. So I just left them there. Lynette had warned me Natalia would roll around and flop while Sonny would just sit there like a turtle on its back. (A trend that continues today, as far as physical activity.) I figured I’d be fine hopping out of the room for a few to check some car auctions. I was maybe a minute into my second favorite Internet-related activity when I heard some crying. I came back in and Natalia was facedown on the floor. She had rolled herself out of the daybed, two feet down to the carpet. Sonny was still in the bed unfazed. I ran in and grabbed her, she was squealing but seemed more confused than hurt. I checked for damage and was carrying her around, and saying it was okay and not to tell anybody. I didn’t hear her hit the ground, just the crying afterward, so I had to assume that it wasn’t too bad. Needless to say, when Lynette saw the bump that later appeared on Natalia’s head, I was not left alone with them as infants very much.

On a fecal side note: Natalia was a gassy baby. I remember there was one night when she was constantly breaking wind, and then the dog Molly got in on it, too. So I decided, fuck it, I was going to let it fly myself. I was going to fart-icipate. We’d have a nice family fart fest. It was kind of fun, until Lynette came in and blamed me, and then didn’t appreciate when I tried to pin it on Natalia and the dog.

When it came time to potty train them, Natalia beat Sonny to the punch. I came home one night, and Lynette said, “Do you notice anything different about Natalia?” I immediately guessed something was up with her hair. That’s usually the answer to “Notice anything different?” with the chicks. Lynette told me, “No, she’s wearing her underpants.” This might seem like I was tuned out, but it’s ultimately a good thing that I didn’t notice, because the last thing you want is the answer, “Yep, I know that crotch up and down and I noticed instantly something was off.” That’s what we’d call a tell in the To Catch a Predator game.

It wasn’t a perfect pull-up to potty progression. We developed a system where I had to wake her up at midnight and take her to pee so that she didn’t have an accident in bed. It was a little hit and miss. Sometimes she’d beat me to the pee-pee punch. If she was wet, I’d make Lynette handle it. I wasn’t fucking with that nonsense. But most times she’d just be in this fog, take care of business and later have no memory of it. I’d rub her head and gently coach her to take a leak, so Daddy could get to bed himself. But I didn’t know about the toilet paper part, until I was informed by Lynette that I didn’t know that there was front wiping for the ladies after a tinkle. I’m a guy, we only have one use for toilet paper. And I can’t wipe for her. That would be super weird. So I’d hand her the paper and let her do it. It was dark, because I didn’t want to wake her up and her midnight motor skills weren’t so good, so who knows how that all went, but an attempt was made and soon we were all able to go back to bed.

But those minutes waiting for her to pee felt like forever. I’d just sit there and wait in the silence and then, suddenly, it would sound like someone was using a pressure washer to clean the coping of a pool.

Let me do a little side tangent on bathroom sounds. I was at another one of my vintage races and had the bad luck of having to make a number two in the port-a-potty. I didn’t have any other option. That is a fate worse than death. We all know the smell is terrible but what I realized then was that even more disconcerting is the sound. Or lack thereof. The worst noise a man, woman or child can hear is when your ass is on that wafer-thin port-a-potty seat to do a little offloading and the dook doesn’t make the splash sound. It just sounds like you shit on a hot rock. That splash noise is comforting, as opposed to that awful “flop” sound. I’d rather hear a dentist’s drill. You get this in the airplane bathroom, too. You don’t realize how much you miss that sound when you don’t have it. This led me to envision another in my series of new apps. I call it Kerplunk. You put your earbuds in and, at the appropriate time, hit the button and it plays a nice splash sound, like dropping a charcoal briquette into a bucket of water.

Back to Natalia and her wily urethra. One time, she pulled down the pajamas and underpants like normal, and somehow the stream was off and she ended up soaking her jammies. So I was standing there holding her pee-jays, trying not to drip the wee on myself while fishing around in the dark for a clean pair. I ended up grabbing Sonny’s Underoos and holding them up to the nightlight to try to figure out what the fuck is going on without waking him up. I was on the verge of just telling her to go to bed without underwear or pajamas. But I didn’t want to endure Lynette’s wrath if she found Natalia naked the next morning, or the awkwardness of that partially recovered memory. I can just hear Natalia telling you, her therapist, “All I remember is my dad getting me up in the middle of the night, and then waking up naked the next morning.”

A couple of times the nightly pee routine did cause some tension with the wife. I came home at midnight once, after two live podcasts in the midst of an incredibly busy week. Lynette was luxuriating in a bathrobe on top of the 1,000 thread-count sheets watching Homeland. I literally didn’t even know what day it was, I had been so busy. I walked in and told her how burnt-out I was. She agreed that I needed to take a break from the road gigs, and then reminded me it was midnight and that I needed to take Natalia for a piss. I said I was too fucking tired. She said, “You’re right.” Then added, “Wait an hour, then do it.” It wasn’t malicious. It was worse. It just didn’t occur to her to do it herself. In her defense, when she saw me deflate at her suggestion and nearly pass out from exhaustion, she got the gist and took care of it herself.

As I said, Natalia beat Sonny in the potty-training race. He was still in pull-ups when she had moved on to panties. I tried to create a little quarterback controversy, a little competition and use her as leverage. I started shaming him by calling the pull-ups diapers, which he’d always angrily correct me on.

And a quick tangent on gender roles. One night, we ran out of the Spiderman pull-ups. All we had were Natalia’s now no-longer-needed Dora the Explorer ones left. When we attempted to put Sonny in them, it was like trying to put a cat in a crate. He was crying and infuriated that we would even consider putting him in pink girl pull-ups.

Also, when it comes to the Underoos and pull-ups in general, I don’t get it. Aren’t you supposed to idolize Doc McStuffins and SpongeBob and whoever the kids’ character du jour is? Why would you want to pee on them? Aren’t we just training kids to be into weird stuff sexually? We’re essentially telling them that if you love someone, you should take a leak on them. This is a golden-shower fetish waiting to happen.

The potty-training issue with Sonny was more about the backside than the front. He was a little obsessed with having a clean butthole. So if you, as his therapist, are seeing some OCD behavior that might be why. He would demand that we wipe his butt for a long time, until I made him start to do it himself. We’d go back and forth. He’d be calling from the bathroom, “Daddy, wipe my butt.” Then you’d hear me shouting from down the hallway, “Wipe yourself.” He wouldn’t give up the ass ghost on that one for a long time. He was worried he’d miss a spot. We eventually reached a compromise, where he’d bring me the toilet paper and I’d dust it for dook and make sure he had a clean wipe. I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t think shaming my son about his anus was a great plan. That’s the kind of thing that will land him in some horrifying porn. So rest assured, therapist, I did my best.

I can think of one pee-related incident with Sonny. There was a weekend when Lynette was going to Chicago to see Bruce Springsteen and taking the kids with her, which meant I got to drive her Audi. After they had been dropped off at the airport, I got a call from Olga but, through a broken cell connection and broken English, all I understood was that there was a problem in the car. I wasn’t sure what it was until I looked in the compartment on the passenger-side door. I found a Ziploc bag full of pee. Apparently, on the ride to the airport Sonny just couldn’t hold it. I used to be a bed wetter, so I get it. I don’t mind the piss in the bag, I just mind the part where it stayed in the car. I called Sonny that night for our usual good-night conversation and tossed in, “And thanks for the gift you left in the car.” Not getting the irony Sonny said, “That’s not a gift.”