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: 5 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

So, therapist, I pray that this letter was unnecessary and that their asses have not graced your couch because the sweetness I’ve seen from Natalia as she’s gotten older has continued and Sonny has remained as mellow as ever. But if not, then I hope it cleared up a few of the misconceptions or straight-up lies that you might be hearing in therapy about dear old dad. My wish is that they regard me as firm but fair. But if the twins are in therapy, the one thing I hope they don’t say is, “He did his best.” That’s a tell that you had a shitty dad. It’s the lowest grade you can give a parent without completely disowning them as drunken abusive assholes. If either Sonny or Natalia are telling you that I did my best, then all the defending I’ve done of myself is useless. But, rest assured, if they are at least halfway functioning people it’s because every good thing they’ve said about their mother is completely true.

CHAPTER 5
Punished for Participation

IT ISN’T THAT I don’t try to be a good dad. I get involved with their lives to the best of my ability. Sure, I’m not the kind of dad who lets his daughter put makeup on him or gets down on the floor to bust out the gluten-free Play-Doh with his kids. But I do make an effort. It is just that every time I’ve tried to engage with the kids, it has blown up in my face.

My first mistake was reading to them. I’m not a great reader (which I’ve, ironically, written about in my other three books), so it’s an embarrassing chore. When someone wearing a Curious George onesie is correcting you on your grammar, it’s time to take a long hard look in the mirror. I’ve always been a terrible reader. I was never formally diagnosed with any reading disability. I was tested for dyslexia and passed. It’s one of the few tests I wish I had failed. At least that would be an answer as to why I couldn’t read the back of a cereal box when I was a kid.

People always said to me, “You must have been dyslexic.” I wasn’t. Why is it that when a white kid can’t read people say he’s dyslexic but when a black kid can’t read people say he “fell through the cracks.” This is a racist thought. I was as white as they come, and I fell through the cracks known as my parents and the Los Angeles school system. That said, Dyslexia would make a great black name. Sounds like a good wide out for the Steelers.

The problem is that I went to a crappy free-range hippie school where we were taught more about hating Nixon than loving the alphabet. Then I spent years doing construction with addicts and idiots and the latest tome from John Irving didn’t really come up around the hose that was our water cooler. In fact, on a construction site being educated could be a hindrance. You’d be mocked mercilessly. “Hey, Alex Trebek, why don’t you use that giant brain of yours to figure out the nailing schedule on that shear wall.”

When I was in the sixth grade, I had to go up to the chalkboard and write the Phys Ed schedule. I had to put the girls in one column and the boys in the other. I spelled girls with a U. Gurls. That was the end for me. So reading has always had not just a physical, but an emotional barrier, too. It makes me feel like crap. Thus, reading to my kids was a tough putt. But I powered through. And I’ll tell you what I learned. All those years of not reading were worth it. Kids’ books are some of the worst pieces of shit ever committed to the page.

One of the books I was tasked with reading to Sonny when he was around five was Danny and the Dinosaur.

This piece of shit was written in 1952. You can tell right away, because the kid on the cover is blond and white, as are all of his friends in the book. Today, it would have to be a multicultural rainbow and there’d have to be a kid with leg braces or a wheelchair. But the kids in this book looked like Hitler Youth.

I tried to have a moment and not judge, and just enjoy doing something Sonny liked. Like all little boys, he loved dinosaurs. But I barely made it past the title. It’s shitty alliteration. That’s the first strike. And it doesn’t rhyme. Strike two. Strikes three through twenty-eight were the writing. After Danny rides the dinosaur out of the museum, a dog barks at him. Here’s a true quote from the book: “ ‘Bow wow!’ said a dog. ‘Go away, dog. We are not a car,’ said Danny.”

I feel like anyone could write that book. You could figure out exactly how long it took to compose by dividing the number of words it contains by the word per minute count of the author’s typing test. There is nothing complex or interesting about this story. At all. It would barely count as a first draft.

But buckle up for the big ending. There’s a message to be sent. The other children leave and the dinosaur says he has to go back to the museum, but he had a good time with Danny. Danny walks away and goes home. Wow. I’m telling you, that is some Breaking Bad—level plot twisting right there. That’s not an ending. That’s just the place where the author stopping writing. That book ended because the writer needed to take a leak.

The good news is that I don’t think Sonny liked it either. But then again, I did read with so much disdain in my voice, I didn’t really sell it.

People always tell me not to care about how bad children’s books and cartoons are, but kids absorb this stuff. Parents are told that exposing their children to the arts and to classical music helps with brain development. Kids suck up stuff like sponges, right? Would you rather your kids’ spongy brains soak up Mozart, or Flo-Rida? Why not go for some higher-quality books while you’re at it?

One book I had to read the kids, that did rhyme, was Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar? This was one Natalia wanted. They adapted it from a kids’ playground song. The first page was the phrase “Who took the cookies from the cookie jar?” repeated three times. Then a skunk spends the next ten pages accusing lizards, mice, raccoons, frogs and other creatures of taking the cookies. Spoiler alert, it turns out it was the ants. But after they get caught, the ants share the cookies. This book goes nowhere and sends a terrible message about theft. So, kids, if you get caught shoplifting a couple iPhone cases, just offer to share them with the mall security guard and everyone will be happy.

Here’s the thing that really bothered me about this particular book. I can almost give a pass on shitty writing if the person also illustrated their own story. Okay, maybe you’re a hack writer, but at least you can draw. But this book was written by not one, but two people – Bonnie Lass and Philemon Sturges – and illustrated by a third, Ashley Wolff. Is this actually a three-person job? I’m the only one required to make a literal shit; why does it take three people to produce a literary shit?

So my answer to the question “Who took the cookies from the cookie jar?” is WHO GIVES A FUCK?! What was really taken was fifteen minutes from my life that I would like back.

The worst of them all is Where the Wild Things Are. This beloved tome has probably sold two zillion copies worldwide over the last forty-five years. Like all parents, I had to read this garbage to my kids. As with all the other kids’ books I’ve been bashing, this is a story about nothing, it goes nowhere and it doesn’t even rhyme. Credit where credit is due, the illustration is great, but the words you could write in less than an afternoon.

Those of you who doubt me and wax nostalgic about this book, please read it again and tell me if it’s not a pile of shit, or originally written in Hungarian and poorly translated. Because it seems very strange.

And like the ants in the cookie jar book there is a negative message in Where the Wild Things Are, too. The kid is being a little shit, even chasing the dog around with a fork, and is thus sent to bed without supper (which, by the way, parents don’t get to do anymore. They’d have child protective services called on them). So he’s in his room, apparently drops some peyote, floats out the window and goes to a magical place inhabited by some enormous creatures that don’t really seem to bother him. They make him their king, but he splits, even though they wanted him to stay and when he gets back from his acid trip his food was waiting for him. Message received. Be a total asshole to your parents, and then abandon your friends. No problem. There won’t be any consequences.

Also, like the cookie jar book, it does that cop-out stretch writing thing. It’s the literary equivalent of like stepping on cocaine with baby powder. In Where the Wild Things Are there are three pages for the following phrases “And he got in his boat and he sailed… And sailed… And he sailed some more.” Is your typewriter broken in a way that only allows you to write that sentence? I’m writing this book. I have a word count from my publishers. I can’t just write the same sentence over… and over… and over… and over again.

When I looked up Maurice Sendak’s credits I was thoroughly unsurprised to find that he never did a single book for adults. It’s not like “Oh, and he also wrote All the President’s Men.”

Here’s the real problem. Whether it’s Mapplethorpe and Piss Christ or a shitty Adam Sandler movie I’m not bringing my family to see it. But I’m forced to read these books. I have to read to my kids, and thus put this toxic waste into my brain, filling valuable real estate that could be taken up with vintage racing cars and porn.

This has been going on for centuries. Slightly after the invention of the printing press, parents were being tortured with this tripe. Not that it always has to be published. Nursery rhymes suck, too.

You’ve got an old woman who lives in a shoe with too many kids and is probably on welfare, babies in cradles falling out of trees, you’ve got three blind mice having their tails cut off with a butcher’s knife and the ring around the rosie song is about the plague.

Then there’s Lizzie Borden. We used to take horrible shit and turn it into nursery rhymes. This chick murdered her family. Adorable. That was apparently novel enough to turn it into a nursery rhyme. Unfortunately, something like this happens every day in Dade County. Do we have a Charles Manson nursery rhyme? Are kids on the playground singing nursery rhymes about that chick who drowned her kids in the tub?

It occurred to me one night when I was playing with Sonny’s feet how lame the “This Little Piggy” nursery rhyme is. In fact, we shouldn’t even call it a nursery rhyme since it doesn’t fucking rhyme. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none. And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home. Not even an attempt at a rhyme.

This little ditty first appeared in 1728, well before the Internet. So this piece of shit spread by word of mouth. How did it catch on? There’s a weird foot fetish angle to it. I’m convinced that this was “written” by a foot fetish pedophile who wanted to get his neighbors to take their kids’ shoes off in front of him. “Hey, I’ve got this great thing you can say to your kids. But first they need to take their shoes off. Yeah, that’s the stuff… slower… slower.”

Also, it is lazy. So the first piggy went to market. Okay, good start. But then the second stayed home? He couldn’t go to the carnival or the castle or something? He literally does nothing? The third one had roast beef, which has to be an awkward conversation with the cows he sees at the farm. “How was lunch?” “Good, I ate your brother-in-law.” Then the fourth piggy has none. He doesn’t eat anything. Creatively, the author just gave up. I want to find this guy and go wee wee wee on his grave.

The funniest part is that I got annoyed by this and decided to hash it out with Lynette, and the conversation got heated. Was the first pig the same as the third pig? We couldn’t agree if the first pig went to market and got the roast beef. Are there only two piggies? The fifth one went all the way home, is that a different home? Is he coming home to the piggy that stayed home or to another house? Eventually, it got to the point where Lynette was shouting, “He doesn’t go back to the other house. He has his own home, you idiot.”

Let’s Get Physical

I’ve made it a point to interact with my kids physically. This was something I never got from my parents. When they were just one year old, I was launching them like horseshoes onto a pyramid of pillows on my bed. I knew boys like to wrestle around and roughhouse, but I had figured out by that point that Natalia had the daredevil gene, too. It was in their blood. All my nephews had the gene, too. They had broken arms every other week. All my stupid roof jumping and reckless driving escapades have been detailed in my previous books. So it was inevitable that my kids would have that thrill seeker thing in them, too.

I’ve already told you about the abuse I take from Natalia during our wrestling matches. Here’s the thing – as much as I try to enjoy these moments of physicality with my kids, I always come up short. No matter who wins the match, I’m always the loser.

One night, when they were about four and a half, Olga was in Guatemala taking care of her sick mother. And heaven forbid the wife and I raise the kids by ourselves. So the maid who usually only comes in on Friday had been asked to come in a little extra to help us out. She has a son herself, so she asked if she could bring him. The little boy’s name is Nathan. He was six years old.

Well, Nathan had heard about our wrestling time and wanted in. There are three things you should know about this situation before I tell you the story. First, the maid and her man had gotten divorced. I don’t know why, I don’t speak Spanish and I didn’t want to get involved with that telenovela. But I know as a product of divorce how much little boys want to be roughhoused by their old man. So I decided to let Nathan in on the fun.

The second fact is that not only was Nathan older than the twins, he was big for his age. Way bigger than the twins. He had a bucket head and a barrel chest. He was built like a pony keg.

The third thing is that at the time I had a fucked-up knee. I’m a guy who doesn’t complain about injuries. Everything else, yes. But when I’m in pain, you won’t know it unless it’s bad. This was bad. I ended up needing surgery.

Natalia’s favorite move at this time was to hop on the bed, take a running start and launch herself at me headfirst. I’d catch her and swing around 360 to throw her back on the bed. Nathan saw this and wanted to try it, too. Again, feeling bad for this kid and his absentee dad, I couldn’t tell him to hold back while I wrestled with my privileged white kids. I told him to go for it. It was like getting hit by a train. And since I managed not to get knocked over and toss him back on the bed, he wanted to do it again. I probably wrestled with this king-sized kid for an hour and jacked up my knee even worse than it already was.

Frankly, I’m surprised Lynette even lets me do this. My rough-and-tumble time with the kids has led to a couple of injuries. In fact I started unintentionally injuring them early and often. Over the holidays in 2007, when the kids were about eighteen months old, I was working out with a trainer. We had one of those big yoga balls. He knew I had a great sense of balance and wanted to see if I could kneel on the thing and not keel over. I did it, no problem. Then he wanted to see if I could stand on it. I could. Then he stepped it up and started tossing me a medicine ball to see if I could catch it and still maintain my balance. I could. I was pretty impressed with myself. So the next night, I decided to try and impress Lynette. I was kneeling on the yoga ball maintaining balance when Natalia walked up and quietly said, “Up.” I figured if I could catch a medicine ball hurled by a personal trainer and not fall, I could pick her up. I leaned down and was able to scoop her up and still stay on my knees on the ball. Then Sonny came waddling in after her. At the time, he was built like a butt plug. He didn’t have “up” in his vocabulary yet, so he just stood there staring with an “up” look. So I picked him up, too. Again, no part of me was touching terra firma. I just leaned over and grabbed him and then hoisted him with my other arm. I balanced for a good while with one in each arm while Lynette watched, impressed and getting hot for me. That is, until the phone rang and I unconsciously turned and my knees went out from under me and we all went ass over teakettle. Of course, my instincts kicked in at that time and I protected my greatest treasure… my face. That’s my money maker. I dropped the kids like two sacks of flour. They both hit the floor with a thud, landing on their backs and heads. Meanwhile, I landed on my chest and looked up from the carpet to see a look on Lynette’s face like I had just broken into the house and was wielding a rusty machete. A three-count later, both kids exploded in tears and Lynette scooped them up. They were okay. But then again, it’s hard to tell when a kid might be concussed. It’s not like they have big presentations to make the following morning. Their next day was crapping themselves and being fed oatmeal, which is what usually happens when you have a traumatic brain injury, anyway.

We had recurring dance parties, too. Every now and again, I’ll fire up iTunes or Pandora and just dance with the kids. (As my long-time fans know, the only time I feel alive is when I dance.) We’ll just crank up the Pretenders and rock out. One night, I had my iTunes going and Sonny and I were jamming to John Hiatt’s “Pirate Radio.” But the next song in the cue was “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. Now, I’m not going to apologize for that. There’s room for Swedish pop in the Ace Man’s playlist. It was just one of those moments that would have been awkward if someone walked in to see me and my seven-year-old son dancing and singing along like a couple of drunken bridesmaids. It’s like the time I was at the kids’ school to build a haunted house with the other dads. I was kind of the foreman since I had the most experience. I wasn’t a dick about it, but I did lob in a few condescending comments towards the other Hollywood dads with their fourteen-volt cordless Black & Decker drills. (If you’re asking yourself now why they deserve to get made fun of for that, please lump yourself in with that pussy lot.)

I figured we should have some music going while we worked, so I pulled my car around, and turned up the ’70s channel on the satellite radio. The first tune to come up was one of the few Eagles songs I like, “New Kid in Town.” But I still felt the need to announce that I put it on the ’70s channel and that this wasn’t my iPod. Thank God I did, because as I was giving the speech Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” started. Like ABBA, I have a place for this song in my repertoire, too, but it’s not exactly construction site music. You couldn’t hit me with a little Foghat? How about some Edgar Winter, seventies station? We’re building a haunted house; would it kill you to pump a little “Frankenstein”?

When it comes to music mixes like Songza and Pandora, we’ve got to get our playlists straightened out. The whole Songza theme playlist for waking up with energy on a Sunday morning, throwing a summer barbecue and so on, has one fatal flaw. Shortly after I moved to my current home, I was out playing ball with the kids in the backyard and enjoying myself for a few moments. I went back into the kitchen where Lynette was listening to “Penny Lane” by the Beatles. I said to her, “I love this song. Do that thing where you get it out on the speakers in the backyard.” So as I walked down the hall toward the backyard, she hit a couple of buttons to pump it out of the speakers out there. And as I stepped out, I heard the last seven seconds of “Penny Lane,” and it went right into John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good.” Without breaking stride I turned around, marched back in and told Lynette to change that piece of crap.

Who likes both those songs? I don’t know one person that enjoys the simple beauty of “Penny Lane” and the sonic cat-o’-nine-tails that is “Hurts So Good.” When that song comes on at the pizza joint and you’re forced, for those horrifying three minutes, to listen to it, it’s like you’ve done something wrong. So what kind of maniac is putting this list together? It’s musical whiplash. You’re going from one of the best songs ever written to one of the worst ever recorded without some sort of buffer song.

I’m going to invent an app that inserts those buffer songs into predetermined playlists, so if the playlist builder felt some Satanic urge to include “Hurts So Good” after a classic and make my ears hurt so bad, the computer will override it and jam something mediocre into the mix so I don’t get the bends. This way, as you’re listening to music it’s not like getting plucked out of a Jacuzzi and shoved into a snowbank. And the definitive not-great-but-not-terrible buffer song is “Main Street.” Which is why I’m naming the app Seegr.

Coach Carolla

Both of my kids are involved in sports. Some of which I approve, others I think are a waste of time and are going to turn my kids into pussies and prima donnas. But the bottom line is that all of them cost me time, money and a little bit of my soul. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing my kids having fun and succeeding, but the other parents, the bureaucracy and the everyone’s-a-winner bullshit make me want to forfeit as a father.

I’ll start with the parents.

Maybe it’s because I’m in Los Angeles, but I’ve had an assful of “cool” parents. The ones who put their kids in T-shirts of bands they listened to when they were younger. I sincerely doubt that your fourteen-month-old is really into Motorhead or Run DMC. This is you jacking off, hoping someone else at the soccer game will tell you that you’re cool. But it just shows that you’re desperate. Sonny had a Tiger Scout event that I attended recently, and I saw that the forty-something dad who was serving as the Scout leader was wearing slip-on Vans. He was wearing the same shoes as Sonny. I’m not saying that the guy has to sport a pocket watch and monocle, but there should be a little distinction between adult and kid. When you’re in a position of authority, the black-and-white checkered slip-on canvas shoes do not scream leader. Also, it’s pretty ironic that the guy leading a group of kids who earn merit badges for knot tying was sporting shoes with no laces.

One place that was rife with hipster parents was the Hollywood YMCA. I was the assistant coach for Sonny’s basketball team there. First off, the Hollywood Y should be called the Hollywood Why? It’s a weird place. If you ever want to see a homeless guy on an elliptical machine, a dude working out in jeans and flip-flops or a chick dragging her dog behind her on the treadmill, that’s the place. But I had to visit that village of the damned and attempt being an involved father.

Sonny is a pretty good basketball player. He’s lean and quick but he’s not aggressive at all. He can run down the court but he doesn’t try to get the rebound. He’s not hungry for the ball. I told him one day, “You know my nickname for you? The Vegetarian Cheetah. You’re fast but you’re not hungry.” He said, “I like it.” I don’t think he got how insulting it was supposed to be.

Anyway, his games started at eight-fifteen in the goddamn morning, and the other dads were packed into their skinny jeans and their hair was perfectly unkempt. Clearly, there was a ton of effort being made attempting to look like no effort was being made.

And these same parents abuse their kids in an effort to make them as cool as they think they are. One of the kids on Sonny’s team was a blond boy with super-long hair. He looked like Kate Hudson’s androgynous kid. The poor coach could never figure out if this kid was a boy or girl. Because the kid is six, you kinda have to go off the hair to ID the gender. It was so wildly uncomfortable watching him talk to the parents about their kid, as he squirmed to keep it gender neutral. This is such a narcissistic thing on the part of the parent. You’re giving the kid a gender-identity disorder so that you can feel cool. He doesn’t need a look. He’s not trying to get laid. He’s not launching a line of hair-care products. Just let him be a six-year-old boy or her be a six-year-old girl and stop making it about you, Mom and Dad.

These are the same parents who give their kids the so-called unique names I wrote about earlier. One week, I was leaving the Y with Sonny and heard behind me a mother shout, I shit you not, “Coltrane! Coltrane!” I silently prayed that she was black, so I could give her a pass. Nope, skinny blond in yoga pants. Ugh.

I was the assistant coach of Sonny’s team, but one week I was flying solo. And boy, was I bitten by the unique name snake. I didn’t know any of his teammates’ names. You know me, I don’t sweat the details. Plus, I had missed the last two practices and had been traveling during the past two games. So I had everyone gather ’round and give me their names and jersey numbers, because a coach has to yell at players. There are substitutions to be made and whatnot and you don’t want to shout, “Hey, half-breed, you go in for future lesbian.” I made the mistake of expecting normal names like Mike. Because that’s how you remember names, you associate them with other names in your life. I work with five guys named Mike, so that would be an easy name for me to remember. I’ve got a couple of Kevins in my life; Jimmy’s son is named Kevin, so I could hang on to that one. So I got on one knee, called everyone in and said, “I need everyone’s name.” And here are the names, there are no alterations and I’ve not added or exaggerated for comic effect: Hudson, Declan, Devon, Finn, Harper, Jenson, Reese and Dash. Not one real name in the bunch. Are there no more guys in America under twenty-five named Doug? How am I supposed to remember Finn and Dash? Not a Mike or Kevin in the whole group. I ended up doing a lot of “Hey, Jew-fro, get back on defense.”

Two things made this event even worse. First, for tipoff of that game the ref called time out and sent Sonny back to the bench and to me, Coach Carolla. He had forgotten to take off his friendship necklace from Jensen. Nothing fills a Dad’s heart with pride like your son taking a timeout from his basketball game to remove a necklace from his boyfriend.

Second, the following week I went back to assistant coaching, and a woman of color who was a parent of two of the black kids on the team walked up to me. At first, I thought, good, I’m finally going to get my thanks for handling the team when the regular coach was out of town. How naïve! It turns out someone had sent her the clip of me talking about this on my weekly appearance on the Kevin and Bean morning show where I used the term half-breed. She said, “I don’t appreciate you referring to my kids as half-breed.” I was confused. I said, “First off, half-breed is an Indian thing. Haven’t you heard the Cher song?” I even started singing it. She hadn’t.

Then she did something that drives me nuts. She said, “Listen, I’m in comedy. So I know humor.” That’s always a clear sign that the person has absolutely no sense of humor. She worked for TBS or something. I love when people start telling you what a fantastic sense of humor they have before they continue to prove they are humorless twats.

I told her I had said “Jew-fro” and “half-breed” intentionally because there weren’t any on the team. I had no idea that her kids were mixed. I thought they were just black. Even if I did know they were mixed I still would have used it. I didn’t say mulatto. No one refers to President Obama or Tiger Woods as half-breed. She was so narcissistic she had to make my Cher reference about herself and her kids.

And to all you do-gooders out there who practice the “I thought you should know” bullshit, you’re just a grown-up version of the tattletale from sixth grade that we all hated. That person who gives a friend bad news under the guise of “If I were you, I’d want to know” is a special kind of asshole. This is a power trip, a way for you to have dominion over other people’s feelings. You get to control them for a minute. Why not knock them down a wrung on the emotional ladder, so they can be as miserable as you are inside? At the same time, you get to elevate yourself by being holier than thou about me, a comedian who’s simply trying to get a laugh and actually made efforts to make sure no one’s feelings got hurt.

And, by the way, mission accomplished. I no longer coach her kids.

Another thing about all the parents at these events that drives me insane is that they’re always taking video of the kids.

In today’s culture kids can’t go three days without being photographed. I don’t know how good it’s going to be to have every event captured on iPhones. Family photos used to be an event in and of themselves, dragging the kids down to the Sears portrait studio in ill-fitting shirts and clip-on ties. Taking the photograph was a memory. I see parents now at every one of my kids’ events holding iPhones and iPads in front of their faces. It might be fun to look at those videos years down the road. Then again it might be used as “what-happened” footage in the 20/20 episode about them when they kill a bunch of nursing students. But it’s definitely bad for the parents. Just be there in the moment, instead of missing it by trying to capture it. That’s what your kid really wants. They want you to be paying attention.

Ironically, here’s a picture of the team getting a pep talk with Coach Carolla.

And last but never least, the government…

Like all things they get involved in, the government fucked this one up, too. Here I was simply trying to spend some time with my boy by coaching his basketball team, and here comes The Man looking over my shoulder.

On the day of Sonny’s first practice I signed into the Y, ready to coach like I’ve never coached before. Because I literally had never coached before. But, I assumed, they’re six, they’ll figure it out.