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

by Adam Carolla

  Slow Crosswalker: I was in San Francisco, running a little bit late for a live show. And I had the slacker chick in the crosswalk in front of our car with her face buried in her phone, texting. She was walking so slowly that she was literally leaning backward. She looked like a weatherman reporting from a category 6 hurricane. Have you ever seen those people who are walking so slow that their feet are a yard in front of them? I thought, “Bitch, are you trying to get run over? Because this is what you’d do if that was your goal.”

  Then I thought about it on a bigger scale. People in general don’t cross the street well anymore. It used to be a sprint, followed by a shoulder roll, then pop up to finish the sprint and stick the landing on the sidewalk. Because when we were kids, people had horrible old drum brakes, and were drunk, so the chances of you getting clipped by a Buick were pretty good, if you weren’t hustling. Nowadays, people aren’t frightened. They’re not scared.

  Here’s my solution. I think that everyone between the ages of seven and ten should get clipped by a car just once. I’m not saying run over by a dump truck and put in a coma, just enough to give them the proper amount of fear for the rest of their life. Like the person who gets bitten by a dog at age three, and then is scared of them into adulthood. Parents: Just put your kid in the driveway sometime around second grade, back into them and, when they’re writhing in pain with their femur coming out of their ass, you say, “Doesn’t feel good, does it? Sure would hate for that to happen again.” They need a healthy respect for the automobile. It’s going to save their lives and it’s going to save me time.

  This may not be too much of an issue for you, Natalia, being a honky and all. This slow-crosswalking is the domain of the brothers. I think it’s a subtle revenge for slavery and racism. As if to say, “I’m taking my time, Whitey.” I’ve always found it ironic as I watch the big brother amble across the street, that the world’s fastest men are the world’s slowest pedestrians.

  Past Life Regression Chick: Natalia, let me just tell you, this is your one go around. You’ve never had a past life. If you decide, at a certain point, that you must have been someone in a past life, rest assured that in this life you’ll be a chick without a dad.

  I’m always amazed at the gullibility of the ladies (though some guys do it, too) who are into this past life regression nonsense. These charlatans are just telling you what you want to hear to make you feel better about your loser life. Sure, you’re a fat chick strung out on painkillers now, but a few hundred years ago you were Joan of Arc. Feel better? That will be seventy-five dollars. Ever notice that past life regression only seems to go back five hundred years? What about the fifty thousand we spent as cavemen? It’s always, “You were a knight during the Crusades” or “You were a poet in ancient Rome.” It’s never, “You were just some hairy asshole eating bark until you froze to death.”

  And, finally . . .

  Complicated Starbucks Order Chick: I was behind one of these clowns not too long ago, and the order was so inane and complicated I had to run to buy a notepad, just so I could write it down and make fun of her on the podcast. She ordered a “grande skinny vanilla latte, light foam, extra hot.” Let’s break that down. Grande. It’s a fucking medium. Just say medium. Skinny. I’m sure the skim milk instead of regular and fake cancer-causing sugar is going to make a fucking difference when you try to squeeze your ass into those yoga pants. Vanilla. If you really want vanilla, go to McDonald’s and get a shake. Coffee is supposed to be coffee. Light foam? Do you like foam or don’t you? You’d need a fucking microscope to tell the difference between the regular amount of foam and light foam. And “extra hot.” How does that even work? Coffee is as hot as it is. Extra hot just means undrinkable for longer. So am I, as the next coffee orderer going to burn my tongue when I get a cup of the scorching batch they made for you because you need to make a spectacle of yourself?

  Let’s take a look at the bigger picture. This was attention-seeking behavior. If I hadn’t been behind this chick, if she were alone in that Starbucks, she would have ordered a medium black coffee and called it a day. But because there were witnesses, she had to make her order as long as the Magna Carta. Asking for “light foam” and “extra hot” is just a way of complicating things so that there’s one more thing the lowly barista can screw up for her highness to complain about.

  These retards are retarding the process. Congratulations, bitch, you’ve successfully slowed down everyone else’s life to make it about you. You don’t love foam, you love you. I opened the door to the place and hit someone in the ass due to the line you caused, because the poor Starbucks kid is now heating up Bunsen burners and putting shit in centrifuges so that you can have your perfect cup of coffee. It’s not even coffee anymore. Starbucks is diabolical. Calorically, what this pretentious bitch was ordering is probably as bad as a Blizzard from Dairy Queen, but they’ve called it a coffee, so she gets to feel like she’s not just buying and consuming a hot milkshake. This is also bullying the person behind the counter. You’re lording your power over the poor tattooed teen.

  There should be two lines, one for regular people like me who just want a caffeine delivery system. There would be a sign reading “Normal” above it. In that line, you can only order coffee and, when you do, it’s just called a medium, and you put the milk and sugar in yourself. Then there would be another line with a sign above it reading “Poser Douche,” for the assholes who want to order the seasonal macchiato, light foam, extra hot, with soy milk, easy on the nutmeg.

  I hope you kids have taken this warning to heart and will avoid becoming any of these assholes. But with my luck, Natalia, you’re convinced that you used to be Cleopatra and are reading this right now at a Starbucks, sipping on a skinny peppermint mochaccino with soy milk while Sonny, who used to be fat, but is now thin, is listening to it on audiobook while he runs a half-marathon to benefit “survivors” of circumcision.

  CHAPTER 4

  Hey, Kids, Here’s a Note to Your Future Therapists

  I KNOW THAT all the shit I’m talking about the twins is going to be used against me at some point, so I want to take some time to set the record straight on a couple of things that they’ll surely bring up to their future therapists. I’m going to address this directly to you, guy with suede patches on his elbows, and Jewish broad with the dream catcher on the wall.

  First, I’ve done therapy myself, so I know how this works. And I respect it. Ironically, I come from a family of therapists. My grandmother was a sex therapist who worked for the VA and once famously asked at the dinner table what a rim job was, because one of her vets had brought it up in group that day. My dad became a therapist back in the 1990s. He had been reading self-help and philosophy books my whole childhood anyway (instead of coming to my football games), and eventually decided to go pro.

  And, to his credit, when I was nineteen, he sat me down and pretty much said, “You’re going to be a mess. Your mother is a disaster, I’m a train wreck; you’re going to need some therapy.” I was making seven bucks an hour digging ditches at the time, so he said he was going to find me a therapist, and that it was going to be a woman so I could work on my mom issues and that he would pay for half and I’d pay for the other half. For someone making minimum wage coming up with even half of the seventy or eighty dollars an hour for a decent therapist was rough. But it was worth it.

  To all of you reading this who are on the fence about therapy because of the cost: It’s smart money, spend it. That one hundred bucks an hour pays off down the road when you learn through therapy how to get out of your own way, stop self-sabotaging and thus make good decisions about relationships and career. Think of it as an investment in yourself. Simply going to therapy helps. Just carving out an hour for yourself, and deciding that you and your life are worth spending some time and money on makes a difference. That simple act alone boosts your self-esteem. Don’t think of going to therapy as “I’m a broken pile of crap and need someone to fix me,” think of it as “I’m going to
change myself for the better instead of crying, masturbating and blaming my parents for the rest of my life.”

  So, back to blaming my parents. I was such a broken pile of crap from my childhood, therapy was inevitable. I’ve done all kinds of therapy: individual, couples and group. Group therapy is kind of rough, especially when you want to leave the group and there’s resistance. Once, when I tried to leave my group therapy, a chick confronted me, telling me I was in denial about how bad I was and that I needed to stay. I think it was her issue, really, some dad shit she needed to work out that she was putting on me. Group therapy is like having all the baggage that comes with a relationship with a crazy chick without the spirited crazy chick sex.

  I’ve also done regular one-on-one individual therapy and appreciated the experience, though I don’t love it when a group of therapists share an office. It’s uncomfortable when you see another person sitting in the waiting room and start wondering what their issue is while attempting to avoid eye contact. Especially if you have regular appointments, you see the same guy every week and can hear him in the next room. Seriously, I’ve heard shit coming through the vent system I will never unhear. I’ve heard “My father wouldn’t stop raping me . . .” while I’m sitting there complaining about my Lamborghini. Makes me realize that most of my issues fall squarely into that rich white people problems category.

  I’ve also done the couples counseling thing, which I didn’t like much. But I still think it works, just not in the way it’s supposed to. The reason couples counseling is effective is because you have to report to someone, typically a woman, who is siding with your woman about how horrible you are. At least that was the case with me. I’ve had people tell me that couples therapy worked for them and saved their relationship. For me, it was just a probation officer that I had to report to. So on Tuesday, when she comes home and wants to unload about her boss and you grunt, walk past her, holding a sandwich on the way back to your Duck Dynasty marathon, knowing you have couples counseling on Friday forces you to turn around and listen. It’s like mandatory drug testing in the workplace. It doesn’t make people not want to do drugs, it just makes people understand and avoid the consequences.

  I do think psychology is important. We don’t put enough emphasis on this as a society. We live in a civilization, we live amongst other humans, but we don’t really know how they tick. If we lived among lowland gorillas, we’d study what makes them happy or what enrages them and their mating rituals, so that we could live in harmony with them. But we don’t do that with other humans. Instead, we live in a world full of PSAs for click-it-or-ticket and motorboat safety. You see the president coming out of church on Sunday, and you realize he probably doesn’t believe it but he has to do it because, if not, he’d be unelectable. But that same supposed Christian president would be unelectable if we found out he was seeing a shrink, which I think is bullshit. I want the guy making the most important decisions for the country to have an idea of the forces that influence his choices, the ramifications of his fucked-up childhood on his thinking and how that affects all of us. Imagine how much better our country would be if Nixon, Clinton and W. had gotten some real good therapy. So I respect you, Mr. or Ms. Shrink, and the work you’re doing to undo the damage I’ve done to my kids, but let me set the record straight on a couple of things.

  First off, I never laid a hand on them. How could I be an absentee father and an abusive father at the same time? Even if I thought I could beat my kids, that would require me to be at home instead of onstage in Portland . . . though I was able to Skype in some emotional abuse from the road.

  Of course, I’m joking. But the truth is hitting my kids is just not in my wiring. If you grow up in Hawaii, you eat poi. I’ve never touched that shit. So I don’t miss it. If I were a native islander, I’d miss it on the mainland. Same with child abuse. The idea of me hitting my kids is not on the menu. I didn’t grow up with it, so it’s not an option. As far as I’m concerned, the thought doesn’t even occur to me. One evening, after skipping my rope, I was trying to pound out forty push-ups like usual. I had my Beats headphones on and was cranking the Graham Parker. I had my eyes closed, and was totally in the zone. Out of nowhere, Natalia ripped the headphones off my head and wailed like a banshee in my face. I was startled. Had it been my buddy Ray, he absolutely would have gotten punched. But in that twentieth of a second, I processed the face of my daughter and that was no longer an option.

  I know that, as a therapist, you’re on the same page, but allow me to rant a bit about this topic. There are certain cultures for whom this is a big issue, and there are cultures around those cultures that suffer the damage. Sometimes, the issue of corporal punishment becomes a national conversation, like after Minnesota Viking Adrian Peterson got charged with abusing his kid. But it never lasts very long. We make a much bigger deal of someone taking a stick and hitting a dog, than someone taking a so-called switch and hitting their kid. The problem isn’t even so much the welts you’re leaving on your kid, it’s the welts they’re going to leave on my kid. Because, by hitting a kid, you’re teaching them that violence is the way to resolve conflicts. I know this is going to get me in trouble, but I don’t care. Black comedians have this whole “who got whooped harder” thing. It’s not a joke; it’s a problem. I saw an interview with Michael Jackson’s dad, Joe, where the interviewer asked him if he had beaten MJ. Joe said, straightfaced, “No, I never beat him.” Then, after a pause, “I whooped him.” As if there’s a fucking difference.

  And speaking of beat, let me take one to talk about Joe Jackson. He’s got the hoop earring and the penciled-in mustache. He looks like an evil carnival barker. If there are any Disney animators reading this and you’re drawing up a new villain, Google Image some shots of Joe Jackson. The part that I don’t get, Joe, is that everyone thinks you’re evil and you know you’re evil. So why go with the evil guy mustache? Why not throw everyone off the trail and grow the Ned Flanders cookie duster?

  When it comes to discipline, I mastered the dad voice. That “Hey!” that stops the kids in their tracks. The Natalia who is sitting on your therapy sofa is probably a lawyer or agent. She was a world-class arguer. Every conversation I had with Natalia was a fourteen-move chess match. It was like a negotiation between the Palestinians and the Israelis. She had this toy called an EzyRoller. It’s like a mechanics creeper for kids to slide down hills. She loved it. Actually, if she isn’t a lawyer or agent she’s probably ended up in the X Games. She freaked me out with this thing. I’d be screaming as she luged down a forty-five-degree grade. She’d be screaming, too, but with delight. One night, she announced she was going out with Olga and would be bringing the EzyRoller with her. It was already dark and I was afraid she was going to go off a cliff or into a phone pole. So I calmly told her she had to leave the EzyRoller at home. Then she started in. “What if I just drag it with me and don’t use it on the hill, just on the flat part.” I said no again. “What if Olga holds my hand?” “No.” We went through fifteen different variations of this back-and-forth before I had to use the guttural, teeth-gritting, angry dad voice.

  She would go ’round and ’round like this with my wife, too. She’d want to take the dog outside, but it would be too cold or too late, and she’d argue with Lynette back and forth for an eternity, until I eventually leaned over the railing and said “Hey! The answer is no. Listen to your mother.” We as parents need to stop pretending that we’re talking to a colleague at a law firm. We need to be firm. These are our kids, not our drinking buddies. It is okay to be harsh and lay down the law once in a while.

  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, wh
ich 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.”