by Adam Carolla
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.
Before practice was about to start the woman who worked at the YMCA came up and asked me, “Did you get fingerprinted?” I didn’t know what she was talking about, so I said no. She replied, “Well, then you can’t coach. You need to be registered and fingerprinted.” I started arguing about how that’s unnecessary and took one of my many stands in the name of sanity.
This is not a star-trip thing. I just hate that we’re removing the part of us that has evolved to have common sense and make decisions. To distinguish between the guy who showed up with his whole family and the guy who showed up solo in the shitty box van. There needs to be some probable cause. If I were a molester or kidnapper, would I bring my wife and other kid with me to the practice? I’m not a pedophile, I’ve never been a pedophile and thus I don’t think I should be treated like a pedophile.
I went back and forth a couple of times until the chick got persnickety and said, “No prints, no coach,” and walked away. Sonny was excited all day for his first practice. He had literally been counting down the minutes. But I needed to make my point. I walked away, too. And when I turned, I got three looks: anger from Lynette, disappointment from Sonny and desperation that said “Don’t make me do this alone!” from Coach Mike.
I’d love to say I had a moment of clarity and softened my stubbornness, but that just ain’t me. I thought it was more important to make the point. Lynette took matters into her own hands, went over to the bitch with the clipboard and smoothed it over. I managed to assistant coach that day, but then avoided it for weeks in a principled protest against their bullshit policy.
Eventually, I couldn’t continue to fight the war on two fronts: against The Man at the Y and against Sonny and Lynette at home; family came first. I caved, drove over to the passport photo/notary public place and got the fingerprints done. And, as expected, it was a colossal pain in the ass.
Because when I say fingerprints, I mean all of them. I still have no idea why they needed all five fingers. Is it like I’m going to take a belt sander to my thumb, just so I can sneak into the Y and molest kids? Can’t it just be one finger, so you can connect me to my son? And I say five fingers, but I really mean ten because they need both hands. Because that’s what I do, I cut off my arm and rent it out to pedophiles.
I had to press my fingers on this glass-plate scanner, which, like all technology in my life, didn’t work properly. We started with the left thumb. But that one didn’t take. The Asian chick behind the counter said, “Are you sweaty?” I immediately got defensive, held out my hand and said, “No, touch them.” My left ring finger wouldn’t take either. I was incensed when the chick said, “We’ll get back to it.” Yeah, because God forbid we skip one out of ten. It got intimate at a certain point, when she had to hold my hand and roll my thumb. In many countries, we’d be engaged.
At the end of the whole ordeal she printed two copies of the report, one for me to supply to the YMCA and one for me to keep. As I turned to walk out, she said, “Wait, here’s your copy.” I told her I didn’t want it and walked away. I only wanted one for the pussy at the Y who’s afraid of getting sued. I don’t need pictures of my hands. I’m familiar with them. I know the back of my hands like the back of my hands. What could I possibly discover?
Not to mention, have we started to live for two hundred years? When did time stop mattering? Why do you think I have the time to sit at a fingerprint office, rolling my thumbs and mashing my palms onto glass plates? I resent the loss of time because the government is assuming that we’re all pedophiles who just haven’t been caught yet.
Natalia plays basketball, too, but her real sport is ice-skating. Now, I know this falls into the white-people problems category, but Natalia’s ice-skating unitard cost almost two hundred dollars. And that was half price. When Lynette told me how much it cost, I asked if she got it at the Caesar’s Palace gift shop. And that was just the unitard. I don’t even want to know how much the skates cost. I think if I find out, I’ll use them to slit my wrists.
What was most infuriating is that when I asked Lynette how much the unitard cost, I also asked her where she purchased it. She said she bought it at the skating rink. That’s like taking your car to the dealer to get your oil changed or getting hit with the fee at a strip club ATM. Stuff is always most expensive right next to where you use it. (By the way, unitard sounds like a mythical special-needs horse.)
I can look at the bright side, though. I am glad that Natalia’s into ice-skating and not ballet. When she was three, I warned Lynette that if I saw her taking Natalia to ballet lessons, I would fucking tackle her at the door. Everyone who does ballet ends up as a disaster. They’re anorexic, they have body dysmorphia and everyone who teaches ballet is a huge cunt. No one ever said, “My ballet teacher was a delight.” They’re all the chicks who wanted to be prima ballerinas, but put on a couple of extra pounds, washed out and then took that anger out on your daughter. I’m all for discipline and hard work, but ballet seems like torture.
Natalia got into skating early. I took her and Sonny roller-skating for the first time in 2011. She was definitely better at skating than he was. Sonny was like a Keystone Kop. He couldn’t keep his feet under him at all. He was like a Stooge and the whole floor was banana peels. Natalia did pretty well right off the bat. I think she got Daddy’s balance, though she did need to use my arm as a support, like a chin-up bar. This was a little tough on the torn meniscus I had at the time.
But like all attempts at joining in an activity with my kids, some asshole adult had to ruin said activity for me. We were at your standard-issue roller rink so of course there was shitty tween music to contend with. The tunes were to be expected, and were therefore tolerated. I knew Katy Perry and Taylor Swift were going to be on the playlist. I didn’t imagine I was going to hit the roller rink and be treated to a rock block of Dave Edmunds, Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello.
What drove me nuts was not the music, but the DJ. It was a female DJ. I think that, when you graduate DJ school, there’s two lines: one for all the guys that says “Future Strip Club DJs,” and one for the gals that says “Future Roller Rink DJs.”
She did a couple things that outraged me. First, she made an announcement as we were circling the rink that the next song would be for “couples and people who want to go solo only.” Isn’t that all human beings? Unless there’s some special polygamist skate, couples and individuals encompasses everyone on the planet.
That was just confusing, but not enrag
ing. Then there was, “The next four songs are all request.” As if she wasn’t going to just play the same Hilary Duff song she intended to play, and pretend someone requested it. I’m pretty sure if I got up there to ask for “Burn” by Deep Purple, that request would not have been honored.
The thing that really got under my skin was when she announced that it was time to play that special four-square game and told everyone to choose a corner if you wanted to play. And if you didn’t, then it was time to leave the rink.
Well, the kids were still a little shaky and Daddy needed a break, so we shuffled to the opening in the wall, exited the oval, found a bench and sat down. We then sat there as they rolled a big fuzzy three-foot die and slowly eliminated each corner. They’d roll it, it would come up four and she’d proclaim, “Okay, everyone from corner four off the rink.” And every time she felt the need to announce, “No new people on the rink.” She’d then play another bit of a shitty song, everyone who hadn’t been eliminated would circle the bowl and get in a corner before they rolled the die again and kicked out another corner. This went on for about two minutes before I looked at Lynette and said, “What the fuck? Can’t we just skate in a circle? We paid. We have to sit here and watch this retarded game of musical chairs without the chairs?” Meanwhile, Natalia was pulling on my sleeve, saying, “Daddy, let’s skate,” and I was responding, “No, honey, the people have to do their dumb game.” Eventually, it was whittled down to a small group, and whatever number the die landed on that corner was the winner. But there was no prize and we were all losers.
Before I had even hit the rink, I had to contend with bullshit policies and the peons making minimum wage to enforce them. I hadn’t even set one wheel on the parquet when someone from the rink came over and said, “No hats, sir.” I was still wearing a ball cap and hadn’t even considered that it would be an issue. I certainly didn’t see any signs warning me that this was a no-hat zone. I guess they’re afraid it could fly off when I hit the breakneck speed of three miles an hour and someone could trip over it. Thanks, lawyers. Awesome society you’ve crafted.
The skating rink is an aquarium for people, the human version of the manta rays just going in a circle in that pool at SeaWorld. So when you want to break from the pack, it’s an issue. After a few laps, Sonny wanted to get back on Carpet Firma and hit the arcade. But when he decided he was done, we were about twelve feet past the opening in the half-wall circling the rink. So we were faced with a choice: go completely around again, or hug the rail and backtrack. I wasn’t going all the way around and Sonny was done. He’d fallen one too many times and was crying. So we went salmon-style up the skating stream. As soon as our skates hit the carpet, the guy from the rink gave me the infuriating “Next time . . .” speech. He had to let me know that what we had done was against policy and that he’d let me get away with it this time. Or what? What the fuck are you going to do? Call the skate cops? And, by the way, do you think I’m coming back tomorrow with another set of kids to relaunch my master crime spree? But I bit my tongue. I didn’t want to make a scene in front of my kids. It just drives me nuts when peons try to wield their minuscule power. Either let me break your stupid rule or don’t, but spare me the “I’ll let you get away with it this time but . . .” bullshit.
Then, to top it all off, Lynette lost the rental ticket stub for our skates, so I got to deal with a hassle when I was turning them back in. I tried showing the chick behind the counter the receipt for thirty-eight dollars, which proved we paid for four tickets. Again, I got the “Okay . . . this time” speech. As if pilfering used roller skates is my career. “Yes, wily rental-counter girl. I’m an international skate thief. I’ve run this scam in every town and have a warehouse full of well-worn skates that I put up on eBay. But you’ve finally caught me. You should sell your story to Hollywood. Think The Music Man meets Zero Dark Thirty, but instead of Bin Laden and his terrorist underlings, it’s me and my skate-stealing cohorts, Al-Skata.”
The only fun I had that day was the belly laugh when Lynette was telling the twins about how she went roller-skating all the time when she was young and Natalia asked me, “What kind of roller skates did you have when you were a kid?” Hilarious. Skates? We were lucky we had sneakers. The Carollas’ car barely had wheels, never mind our shoes.
So, anyway, now Natalia loves ice-skating. She’s done a couple of Christmas skating pageants and even tried out for a production of The Wizard of Oz on ice. One day, I ran into Natalia as I was leaving for work. She had just come back from the tryout. She was very excited. She said, “Daddy, I got the part!” I told her I was proud of her as I skimmed through all the possible roles in my mind. Was she Dorothy? Glinda the Good Witch? I guess they could have a girl playing the Tin Man. I asked her which part she landed. She said, “I’m playing the flying cow.” I said, “What?” I remembered the flying monkeys, but I didn’t remember any flying cow. Lynette clarified that she was in the twister scene, playing the part of a cow getting thrown around by the tornado. My daughter was playing bovine debris. When they write the TiVo description of The Wizard of Oz, I’m pretty sure the flying cow doesn’t make the cut in the cast list. It was admittedly a failure of parenting when I couldn’t help but laugh, crushing her spirits like Dorothy’s house on the Wicked Witch.
I’d like to close this chapter on a positive note, showing that sometimes participating in your kids’ lives can be worthwhile. Let me tell you about a nice outing I recently had with Sonny. As you know, Sonny and I have enjoyed a few delightful trips to the vintage-car races on Coronado Island. It’s always great working on my wheels and bunking up with my boy, but Sonny snores, even though he always denies it the next morning.
I don’t understand the guy who denies that he snores. I’m sorry to say that Kimmel is one of them. What do I stand to gain by accusing you of snoring? The whole interaction is uncomfortable. Why would I lie? Do you think I’m a perv that gets some sort of sexual gratification by making people think they have sleep apnea? What kind of sadistic maniac would you have to be to tell someone who lay there motionless all night, like Michael Jackson in the waning moments of his life, when he woke up, “Hey, man, you were snoring last night. I couldn’t get any sleep.” I said it because it’s true. Whether it’s snoring, halitosis or the piece of parsley stuck in your teeth, when someone musters the courage to tell you an uncomfortable truth, believe it.
Anyway, whether he wants to believe it or not, Sonny is a snorer. And not an average snorer. Most snoring is rhythmic, so you can eventually tune it out like white noise. Most snoring eventually becomes like living near train tracks; after a while you just stop hearing the rumble. Sonny’s snoring had no rhyme or reason to it—it was just startling and definitely prevented Pops Carolla from getting his full eight hours. After one year at Coronado of me dragging ass after a tough night, I ended up buying him Breathe Right strips and they worked like a charm.
This whole event takes place on an active military base, so there are badges and wristbands and all those sorts of things involved. The guy who runs the vintage-race portion of the weekend’s events said he could come by and get my signature early, since he would be at the track before us, so we wouldn’t have as many hoops to jump through when Sonny and I arrived at the track. But because I had to get up at seven that morning to shoot Catch a Contractor in Corona, I couldn’t wait for him at home in the morning. So we agreed to meet at six that afternoon, after the shoot. I got home at five-thirty, exhausted as hell and depressed from spending a day in Corona. When you compare Corona, California, to Tijuana, Tijuana gets offended. It’s the opposite of a Corona beer commercial. No sandy beaches, just dirt lawns and depressed Mexicans. Adding insult to injury, Sonny and Natalia were on my bed with the vibration mode going as I limped into the bedroom. When I asked Sonny what he had done that day, he replied, “Just chilled.” The fact that he chose the word chill, while I was broiling in Corona, really stuck the dagger in.
Anyway, I saw the clock next to the bed and n
oticed that it was past six and my guy still hadn’t shown up. I was getting to the end of my nap window. If I didn’t go down now, it would be too late to bother taking a nap. Now I could still grab a good twenty-five, wake up, watch SportsCenter, have a beer and get back to bed at a reasonable hour, so I would be able get up at seven the next morning to drive to another hellhole . . . this one called Whittier.
I told Lynette, “I’ve got a guy coming by to drop off some stuff. It’s six forty-five; he was supposed to be here at six. I’m going to crash. Just tell him to drop off whatever he needs to.” I then napped and woke up twenty-five minutes later, as planned. I felt a little bit better, but I still had heatstroke from Corona and was staring down the barrel of another miserable day. And then the pile-on began. Lynette said, “Wouldn’t you know it, the second you left the room to nap the guy showed up and rang the buzzer.” I asked, “So what do we have, lanyards, wristbands . . . ?” She said, “Nope, he said he needed your signature.” Still shaking off the fog of a nap I asked, “But he left the stuff behind to sign?” I’m sure you know where this is headed. Lynette said, “No, he couldn’t leave the paperwork, he just took off.” Noticing my stunned stare, she said, “I didn’t want to wake you up. You said you were exhausted.” At first, I was pissed. I wanted to say, “What happened last time you woke me up from a nap, did I throw a samurai sword at your head?” I bit my tongue and internalized my fury. It was my fault, after all. I had spaced on the part that involved me needing to sign the documents. Usually, I just have someone forge my name, but since we were headed to an active military base, it had to be legit. I was devastated. I just wanted to sit and cry. I was just trying to spend some quality time with my kid and take a little break from my crazy work schedule, a guy was offering a way to make that go easier showed up the second my head hit the pillow and was sent packing, thus ensuring that I’d have to do as many laps around the retard racetrack fixing the situation as I would on the actual racetrack. Could it have gone any other way?