Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster)

by Dave Barry

  But listen very carefully, Sophie: If you’re driving in Miami and do not wish to be the target of small-arms fire, IN THE NAME OF GOD DO NOT GO AT A “STANDARD” SPEED OF 30 MILES PER HOUR. Miami drivers go faster than that in a car wash. Likewise, the Driver’s Handbook will tell you that if you’re approaching a traffic light as it turns yellow, you should attempt to stop. But in Miami, doing that would cause your car to be instantly converted into a large sheet-metal origami sculpture by the seventeen cars immediately behind you.

  My point, Sophie, is that there’s a big difference between how the Florida Driver’s Handbook says you should drive and how actual humans drive in Florida, especially South Florida. So to help you understand the mind-set you will encounter on the roads here, I’ve prepared this:

  REALITY-BASED FLORIDA DRIVER’S Q & A

  Q. If I arrive at an intersection at the same time as another motorist, who goes first?

  A. You do.

  Q. But what if . . .

  A. There IS no “what if.” YOU GO FIRST.

  Q. Florida law strictly prohibits texting while driving. Does this law apply to me?

  A. Ha-ha! Of course not.

  Q. If I stop at a red light, how will I know when it turns green?

  A. You will hear honking behind you. This is your cue to start wrapping up your current text, unless of course it is important.

  Q. I have noticed that some roads have more than one lane. What is the purpose of the extra lanes?

  A. To provide a place for you to swerve into while texting.

  Q. When I come to a stop sign, do I need to stop?

  A. You personally?

  Q. Yes.

  A. No.

  Q. How is the turn signal used in Florida?

  A. It is used to indicate to other motorists that you do not realize your turn signal is blinking.

  Q. Could it also be used to signal your intention to turn or change lanes?

  A. Interesting! Nobody has ever tried that.

  Q. What is the best kind of food to eat while driving?

  A. Any food—such as a sandwich, turkey leg, oyster or Ding Dong—that can be eaten one-handed, so you still have a hand free for texting.

  Q. What if an emergency situation arises that might require me to operate the steering wheel?

  A. Use your forehead to honk the horn until the emergency has passed.

  Q. My car’s engine seems to have stopped and I hear a “burbling” noise. What could be causing this?

  A. Are you a senior citizen?

  Q. Yes.

  A. You have driven into a swimming pool.

  Q. I am a young male idiot who prefers to drive at a high rate of speed in densely populated areas while texting. How loud should my sound system be?

  A. It should emit individual bass notes capable of killing a dog at 50 yards.

  Q. I’m a middle-aged male, and I like to put on skintight, junk-displaying Lycra® cycling shorts and a skintight Lycra® cycling jersey covered with logos for corporations that don’t actually pay me anything, then ride around with a large clot of other middle-aged pretend racers screwing up traffic. I don’t have a question about driving, but I HAVE JUST AS MUCH RIGHT TO BE IN THIS Q & A AS ANYONE ELSE.

  A. Everyone hates you.

  Q. I’ve had a few drinks. How can I tell if I should drive?

  A. Take this simple test: Are you wearing your underpants on your head?

  Q. Not MY underpants, no.

  A. Then you are good to go.

  Q. What is all that shouting?

  A. Are you a senior citizen?

  Q. Yes.

  A. You have struck a pedestrian.

  Sophie, I know you think your old man is just kidding. I am not. Ask anybody who drives here: This Q & A reflects the actual situation on the roads of Florida far more accurately than the so-called Florida Driver’s Handbook. But I didn’t write this letter to make you nervous about driving here. I wrote it to make you terrified about driving here. Because I love you a lot, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I will do everything I can to make sure you’re really ready to drive. I’m going to keep coaching you until the day you finally get your license and are allowed to drive alone. Even then, as you leave our driveway, I’ll be standing next to the car, giving you last-minute instructions. When you finally drive away, solo at last, you’re going to feel as if I’m still right there next to you, guiding you.

  In fact I will be right there next to you, walking at a leisurely pace alongside your car.

  Your 1961 Valiant.

  THE REAL MAD MEN

  * * *

  * * *

  Looking back, I think my parents had more fun than I did.

  That’s not how it was supposed to be. My parents belonged to the Greatest Generation; they grew up in hard times. My mom was born in Colorado in an actual sod hut, which is the kind of structure you see in old black-and-white photographs featuring poor, gaunt, prairie-dwelling people standing in front of what is either a small house or a large cow pie, staring grimly at the camera with the look of people who are thinking that their only hope of survival might be to eat the photographer. A sod hut is basically a house made out of compressed dirt. If you were to thoroughly vacuum one, it would cease to exist.

  My mom, like my dad, and millions of other members of the Greatest Generation, had to contend with real adversity: the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, hunger, poverty, disease, World War II, extremely low-fi 78 rpm records and telephones that—incredible as it sounds today—could not even shoot video.

  They managed to overcome those hardships and take America to unprecedented levels of productivity and power, which is why they truly are a great generation. But they aren’t generally considered to be a fun generation. That was supposed to be their children—my generation, the Baby Boomers.

  We grew up in a far easier time, a time when sod was strictly for lawns. We came of age in the sixties and seventies, the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll. We were cool, we were hip, we were groovy, man. We mocked the suit-wearing Establishment squares grubbing for money in their 9-to-5 jobs. That was not for us. We did our own thing, you dig? We raised our consciousness. We tuned in, turned on and dropped out. We lived in communes. We went to Woodstock. We had strobe lights and lava lamps. We wore bell-bottom trousers, and we did not wear them ironically.

  And we had fun. At least I did. I am thinking here of my college and immediate post-college years, when my main goal in life—a much higher priority than academics, or a career—was to have fun. I’m not talking about “fun” in the sense of playing charades, or canoeing. I’m talking about a more hard-core kind of fun, the kind where you might end your night under arrest in an entirely different area code from your underwear. I’m talking about partying.

  I am also of course talking about alcohol and recreational drugs. So to avoid creating the impression that I am condoning the abuse of these substances, let me clarify, right up front, my views on alcohol and recreational drugs: They are a lot of fun.

  No! I’m kidding!

  Sort of.

  What I mean is: Yes, alcohol (which I still consume) (in moderation) (usually) and recreational drugs (which I don’t) (although I used to) (but I did not inhale) can be very bad. But they can also, under certain circumstances, be enjoyable, and even sometimes result in high-quality entertainment.

  I am not going to name any names here, but back in the seventies, at the wedding reception for Rob and Helene Stavis, I saw my attorney and oldest friend, Joe DiGiacinto, wearing a suit and dress shoes, wade into a large outdoor decorative fountain and attack a statue of the Virgin Mary. It wasn’t clear—it still isn’t clear—what the statue had done to provoke Joe, but he was really, really pissed off at it. The result was a highly entertaining battle, Joe vs. the Blessed Virgin (Joe lost), which remains my fondest memory of any wedding I have ever attended, including
my own. It goes without saying that it would never have happened without alcohol.

  I myself have been involved in more than a few memorable situations as a result of alcohol consumption. Granted, I have also done some things I now regret. For example, I owe an apology to former vice president Dick Cheney for my behavior at a social function I attended at the Washington Post back during the administration of George H. W. Bush, back when Dick was U.S. Secretary of Defense. It was a small affair, maybe two dozen people, and Dick was the guest of honor. After several trips to the bar I somehow got it into my head that it would be hilarious to repeatedly re-introduce myself to him. Every time he turned around—this was in a smallish room—there I was, sticking out my hand and saying, “Hi, Dick! Dave Barry!” Then we would have this awkward handshake, because when somebody sticks his hand out to you, your automatic reaction, even if you are Secretary of Defense, is to stick your hand out, only to realize that the person is an intoxicated moron you have already shaken hands with. So that’s what I did to Dick. It might have been funny the first four times, but the last two or three were definitely overkill.

  I am not proud of my behavior that night. Nor am I proud of those times—there were several—when, as a guest at a party in somebody’s home, I set off bottle rockets indoors (although, in my defense, some of those were return fire). I also now regret that I once was involved in an evening that began with drinks called “Singapore slings” and ended with an innocent horse being painted red. Granted, we used a water-based paint. But still.

  There are other alcohol- or drug-related things I regret doing, things that I prefer not to elaborate on here other than to apologize to all the people who, over the years, for one reason or another, I have thrown up on. But for the most part, I look back fondly on the era when I partied hearty, at least what I remember of it.

  That era was basically my twenties. When I got into my thirties, and especially when I became a parent, my concept of “fun” changed, becoming less likely to involve people getting high or hammered or naked, and more likely to involve balloon animals. It was still fun, but it was a far more sedate brand of fun.

  In time I came to accept it as a normal part of growing up. I hate to generalize,* but I think this is the pattern for most people of my generation and those following us: You party hard into your twenties, maybe a little later. But then, as the burdens of age and career and—above all—parenthood press down on you, you put your bong collection on craigslist and settle down. By your mid-thirties your hard-partying days are over. You get serious about the job of parenting. It’s the inevitable course of adulthood. It has always been that way.

  Or so I used to think.

  What changed my mind was Mad Men, the widely acclaimed TV series about Madison Avenue in the sixties. One of the things the show is acclaimed for is its authenticity, which is significant because, if the show really is authentic, then people in the advertising industry back then spent roughly 90 percent of their time smoking, drinking or having extramarital sex. Here’s a typical Mad Men scene:

  Don Draper walks into the Madison Avenue advertising agency where he is an executive. He approaches his office. An attractive secretary sits at the desk outside.

  SECRETARY:

  Good morning, Mr. Draper.

  DRAPER:

  Good morning.

  They have extramarital sex.

  DRAPER:

  Hold my calls.

  He goes into his office, lights a cigarette, pours himself a glass of whiskey. The intercom buzzes.

  DRAPER:

  Yes?

  SECRETARY (on intercom):

  Mr. Draper, there’s an attractive woman here to see you.

  DRAPER:

  Is it my wife?

  SECRETARY:

  No.

  DRAPER:

  Send her in.

  An attractive woman enters the office.

  WOMAN:

  Hello, Don.

  DRAPER:

  Hello.

  They have extramarital sex.

  WOMAN:

  Good-bye, Don.

  DRAPER:

  Good-bye.

  She leaves. Draper lights another cigarette and pours himself another glass of whiskey.

  SECRETARY (on intercom):

  Mr. Draper, some of your fellow executives are here to talk to you.

  DRAPER:

  About what?

  SECRETARY:

  Advertising.

  DRAPER:

  Advertising?

  SECRETARY:

  Yes. You’re an advertising executive.

  DRAPER:

  Oh right, I forgot. Send them in.

  Several executives enter. Draper pours them drinks. They all light cigarettes.

  EXECUTIVE:

  Don, we need to sell some advertising.

  DRAPER:

  OK. Hey, one of you is a woman.

  They have extramarital sex.

  And so on. If Mad Men really is authentic, it explains much about the TV commercials of my childhood, which, in terms of intellectual content, make the commercials of today look like Citizen Kane. Back then many commercials featured a Male Authority Figure in the form of an actor pretending to be a doctor or scientist. Sometimes, to indicate how authoritative he was, he wore a white lab coat. The Male Authority Figure usually spoke directly to the camera, sometimes using charts or diagrams to explain important scientific facts, such as that certain brands of cigarettes could actually soothe your throat, or that Anacin could stop all three known medical causes of headaches:

  Electrical bolts inside your head.

  A big coiled spring inside your head.

  A hammer pounding inside your head.

  Another standard character in those old commercials, providing contrast to the Male Authority Figure, was the Desperately Insecure Housewife, who was portrayed by an actress in a dress. The Desperately Insecure Housewife was always close to suicide because she had some hideous inadequacy as a homemaker—her coffee was bitter, her laundry detergent was ineffective against stains, her meat loaf failed to excite her family, she had odors emanating from her carpet, etc. She was under tremendous stress. She couldn’t even escape to the bathroom without being lectured on commode sanitation by a tiny man rowing a rowboat around inside her toilet tank.

  Even back then, everybody thought these commercials were stupid. But it wasn’t until years later, when I started watching Mad Men, that I realized why they were so stupid: The people making them were so drunk they had the brain functionality of road salt.

  FIRST AD EXECUTIVE: I got it! We put a tiny man in a rowboat in the toilet tank.

  SECOND AD EXECUTIVE: Perfect! Pass the whiskey.

  But here’s the thing: Despite all the drinking and sex on Mad Men, nobody ever seems to have any fun. The characters are almost universally miserable. And that, to me, does not seem authentic.

  I grew up during the Mad Men era; my family, like many of the Mad Men characters, lived in Westchester County, N.Y.—in our case, the village of Armonk. Most of the moms of Armonk back then were housewives; many of the dads—mine was one—rode the train to work in New York City. Some of those dads, including friends of my parents, were advertising executives.

  So during my childhood I got to watch a sliver of the Mad Men generation as they went through their late twenties, into their thirties and forties, raising their kids, pursuing their careers and, in some cases, becoming very successful. Like the Mad Men characters, they smoked a lot and drank a lot, including at work. I don’t know how much extramarital sex went on, and I don’t want to know.

  But I do know this: Unlike the Mad Men characters, the grown-ups back then had fun. A lot of fun. And it didn’t stop just because they had kids. My parents had a large circle of friends, and just about every weekend, throughout my childhood, they had cocktail parties, which rotated from house to house.
I loved it when the party was at our house. Dozens of cars filled our driveway and lined the narrow dirt road we lived on, and dozens of couples poured into the house—the men in suits and ties, the women in dresses and heels, everybody talking, shouting, laughing, eating hors d’oeuvres, smoking, heading to the lineup of bottles on the kitchen counter to pour another drink.

  My sister and brothers and I would lurk on the edges of the party, watching the show, until we got noticed and sent off to bed. But we didn’t go to sleep; we’d sneak back and peek into the smoke-clouded living room to watch as the party got more boisterous, the sound rising to a joyous roar. Sometimes the partiers sang, pounding on our upright piano and belting out popular songs, or parody songs they wrote, sometimes on the spot, to celebrate somebody’s birthday or some other occasion. They’d give each other elaborate gag gifts, and sometimes put on skits or little musical shows, complete with costumes. They held theme parties—charades parties, talent show parties, parties involving scavenger hunts. They’d hire a dancing instructor to teach them the mambo, the cha-cha, the twist, whatever was popular. The parties would go late into the night; the next morning, the living room would be littered with empty drink glasses, loaded ashtrays and, occasionally, a partier or two snoring on the sofa.

  One morning, after my parents had hosted a scavenger hunt party, my little brother, Phil, came into my bedroom and woke me up, shouting, “There’s two giant Bs in the living room!”

  “Giant bees?” I said.

  These turned out to be two four-foot-high letter Bs, made of wood and painted gold. They came from IBM signs that had been erected on property owned by the IBM Corp., which was building its world headquarters in Armonk. How, exactly, the giant Bs ended up in our living room, and whether IBM was aware of their new location, I do not know. What I do know is that it was a hell of a party.