But in America? It’s not pure, unadulterated sloth or taking advantage of a good thing until it goes dry. No—here it’s been coddled and studied and written about and fully vetted into a sickness. It can’t be that your kid is just a lazy, potheaded, beer-bellied slob. No. He must be “special.”
I think the parents don’t wanna face the cold hard facts that their joining of the loins has produced a semi-retard with a nervous twitch so they jump on any available train—in this case the autism express—and blame good old Mother Nature. And of course they find a doctor more than willing to tell them what they want to hear for close to seven hundred dollars an hour—not to mention the special pills and potions. This doctor don’t work that way. You bought this book so I’ll consider that my fee and here is the answer to the questions about your kid: give up. The next Steve Jobs he ain’t. Matter a fact—he ain’t even gonna be the guy who goes to get Steve Jobs his coffee in the morning. If he keeps himself on the straight and narrow and doesn’t get run over by a bus or go to jail—he MIGHT be the guy who cleans up Steve Jobs’s office after Steve goes home to his mansion every night.
Now I know how hard it may be to face the truth when it comes to your kids. If it was easy to be objective about your own progeny don’t you think Paris Hilton’s parents would have hired a short bus and special security to transport their daughter/whore/celebutard out of the public spotlight? Damn right they would have. Instead—they pimped their second daughter out into the marketplace to try and juice more money. Because—I’m sure—they thought she was “special.” Just like Paris is so “special.”
Listen up, America—odds are, your kid is NOT special. Einstein? Special. Hitler? Very special. Your little jackass? Not so much.
Will your child leave his mark on the world? Probably not. A stain, maybe. A mark—that’s probably a reach.
Jeffrey Dahmer left his mark. So did Jesus. And Babe Ruth. Your kid—c’mon. Let’s get real. Unless he kills and eats twenty-five people or walks on water or hits eight hundred absolutely steroid-free home runs, he will more than likely live a boring, fat, stupid and uneventful life and then die from some horrible form of cancer. If he’s a boy—ass cancer. If she’s a girl—cancer of the tits or vagina. Them’s the facts.
There will be another Adolf one day as well as another Albert and there are plenty of Osamas and Kennedys to go around, but you should really take a good long look in the mirror.
Odds are against your kid being smart or talented or good-looking unless you AND your husband/boyfriend/sperm donor are BOTH smart and talented and good-looking. If yer both morons—yer kids’re gonna be morons. It’s the old apple-not-falling-too-far-from-the-tree theory. If yer both fat-asses—yer kids’re gonna be fat-asses. If you happen to be one of those couples they base shitty network sitcoms on—pretty, smart chick with dumb fat husband—more than likely you’ll have two kids and—hopefully—one will be cute and smart and the other a lumpen chunk of meat. And all the government-approved, good American know-how kid-fixing drugs imported in dangerous plastic bottles from China won’t help one bit.
Take a look around. Better yet—just drive down to your local mall. Grab a seventeen-dollar cup of ice cream dressed-up-like-coffee from Starbucks and watch all the hunchbacked, pasty-faced, acne-scarred, backfat-bearing, arms-too-short-to-box-with-the-God-who-supposedly-made-them creatures dithering and doddering along in their two-sizes-too-small designer jeans and hot blue spandex tube tops: these are not just your neighbors. This is what most of this country looks like. What makes you think your kids will be any different?
If you are white trash your kids will be white trash. Believe me—I know what I’m talking about. Just ask my wife. I may live in a beautiful country home with rolling meadows full of gorgeous horses and grass and indidgineous rock formations, but right here in my office as I sit writing these words? I am surrounded by framed photos of Bobby Orr and Cam Neely and Derek Sanderson and Carl Yastrzemski and numerous other baseball and hockey heroes. And I may have used the term “indidgineous rock formations” but only because a guy who did some work here once mentioned it and—hang on a second - - - - I just looked it up in the dictionary and indidgineous is spelled indigenous. See? Whaddaya expect from a guy who—right this second—is wearing a Red Sox T-shirt with mustard stains from a Fenway Frank eaten on the Green Monster seats at Fenway Park during the championship season of 2007 AND a pair of Boston Bruin sweatpants that are so old the drawstring has fallen out of its seam—it don’t get much more white trash than me. Want more cred? When I was a kid we got ice out of a machine eight blocks away from our apartment. We put ketchup on spaghetti. When you outgrew your pants your little brother wore them. When he outgrew them they got mailed over to Ireland. I never had my own room till I moved out on my own.
Now my wife and I have spent a lot of time trying to educate and manner our kids so that they don’t turn out like me. My daughter is smart and funny and gorgeous—just like her mom. She’s also very embarrassed by her father most of the time—just like her mom. My son? Well—he’s funny and smart and tall and—wears the same sweatpants I do. Only they have a Boston Celtics logo on them. And his Red Sox T-shirt has a ketchup stain.
Give up the dream of rearing someone who is going to cure any major disease or invent the next groundbreaking electronic doodad or even sing a number one song. Dial it down a notch. Aim for goals that may actually be within your child’s grasp: the paper-hat-wearing manager at McDonald’s. A driver for UPS. Secretary. Wet-nurse. Welder. Then—if things don’t work out with union jobs—teach them how to count and they can always fall back on the safety net of crystal meth manufacturing. You can do it in your own home. Sure—there may not be a dental plan, but in the world of crystal meth—lack of teeth is not a detriment. It’s actually a badge of honor.
For girls without a college education—the lap dance never goes out of style. All you need—believe me—is two tits, an ass and a vagina. Literally. If you didn’t even have a head some guys might get a little skeeved out, but I’m telling you—a lot of other guys would be lined up around the block to get some lap action from the dancer who didn’t talk. I’m not exactly the strip club type but I’ll tell you this much—I’ve seen more than a few who had fantastic bodies and not so great faces and the exact opposite as well. Guys aren’t in strip clubs to meet the next Miss America. The type of guys who spend money in strip clubs are the ones who don’t have the balls or high enough self-esteem to talk to the pretty girls at work but just enough self-esteem to keep them from hiring a hooker.
The girls are usually the type lacking the self-esteem needed to keep them from peeling off in front of strangers, but somehow holding on to just enough pride not to fall into the fucking-guys-for-money trap. PLUS they’ve all been sexually molested at some point. As have most prostitutes. Usually by drunken male family members. Still interested, guys?
My advice to men who are thinking of going into a strip club would be this: don’t. On second thought, go to the club. Just don’t go in. Stand outside, remove all the cash in your wallet and light it on fire. Watch it burn until it’s just a smoking pile of ashes. Then bang your head against the wall of the club several times—hard. Get in your car. Drive home. When you wake up the next morning, you will have achieved the same effect as if you had spent the night inside the club: no money, giant headache. What did you miss? Nothing. Smelly armpits, seven useless hard-ons and eighty-five horrible tattoos.
That’s another lesson kids today should learn—tattoos may have been cool five decades ago when the only people who had them were sailors, inmates and lead guitar players. Now? Not so much. You wanna be a rebel nowadays? DON’T get a tattoo. Or a nose ring. Or a pierced anything. Everyone will wonder: what the fuck is up with that guy? He actually has nothing painted on or attached to his body except his limbs and his real skin. What a freak. Plus—for girls? You know what that insane snaky flower or some bullshit Chinese symbol or a set of angel wings above your ass or your pussy mak
es you look like? A stripper. Ask a drunk uncle to grab your tit and you’ll be ready to roll.
Hey—The Drunk Uncles. Good name for a band.
Strip clubs—as a matter of fact—are basically live laboratories for low self-esteem. The dancers, the customers, the bartenders—everyone in there would rather be somewhere else. The dancers would rather be living normal healthy lives, the guys would rather be in a cheap hotel room with the dancers and the bartenders and bouncer would rather be actors or professional athletes. In expensive hotel rooms with the dancers.
Will performing in a strip club or selling drugs damage your child’s self-esteem? You bet your ass it will. But low self-esteem is a disease every single kid in this country could use a little bit more of.
When I was a kid one day in grammar school one of the nuns was teaching us about what it took to become the president of the United States. After all the typical bullshit about hard work and dedication and blah blubbedy blah—she took a left turn into the Constitution and spiced it up with a little extra info—that as long as you were born in these United States and had all the other qualifications in place—ANYONE could become the commander in chief once elected. Hey—that was news to me. Up to that point the only things I had spent time dreaming of becoming were a Boston Bruin, a Boston Red Sock or the newest/youngest member of the Rolling Stones.
I walked home from school that day doing the political math in my head: I was born in America / I could—ostensibly—start working hard in school / John F. Kennedy had been the president and HE was Irish and Catholic. Not to mention the fact that he was FROM where I lived—Massachusetts. Not only that—when he was president he had one time driven through our neighborhood on his way to deliver a speech at Holy Cross—a college not more than twelve blocks from where our apartment was.
Needless to say, I arrived home with flashes of my future success illuminating my brain: people waving at me as I drove through their neighborhoods in MY motorcade; my mom yelling at the White House staff about leaving all their supposedly important papers lying around everywhere; me passing laws that would make huge differences in our society, for instance—declaring free candy and no more school for kids everywhere.
When my dad got home from work I ran right up to him.
What’s up? he said.
I could barely wait to get the words out:
Sister So And So said that anyone who was born in this country has the God-given right to become the president of the United States.
That’s absolutely one hundred percent true, he said.
And then she said that all you had to do was work hard in school and get a college education and get good grades and want to help people and change things and make this world a better safer place.
That’s true too, he said.
And then you just get people to vote for you?
Yup.
And then if they do—you get to be president?
Yup.
(Wow. A rush of dreamy blood flooded my tiny blond head. I went in for the ultimate okay.)
So does that mean that I could become—one day—if I did all that stuff—the president of the United States?
There was a long pause. My dad looked down at me with a warm smile creasing his friendly face. Then, he said:
Hell no! Whaddayou—crazy?
Then he started to laugh as he gave me a big hug.
Hey Nars! he called out (that was my dad’s nickname for my mom, whose real name is Nora)—Dinzo thought he was gonna be the president one day!
I could hear my mom’s laughter bouncing off the dark brown paneling in the hallway outside the kitchen.
Then my dad leaned down and said:
You ain’t ever gonna be the president, son. Because you gotta be born here, you gotta work hard in school AND—you gotta be rich. And we ain’t rich. Now go get ready for supper.
And that was the end of that dream. Crushed like a bug under the immigrant boot of my no-nonsense old man.
Did it make me sad?
Yes.
Did it knock my adolescent self-esteem down a heavy notch or two?
Yup.
Did it lessen my faith in The Great American Dream?
You bet your patriotic balls it did.
But he was right. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was ever going to have even a sliver of a micro-ounce of an atom’s testicle of EVER getting elected to the highest office in the land where I lived. I had a better shot at growing TITS than I did living in the White House. Shit—speaking of shots—given my place in American society I was more likely to fire a weapon AT a presidential motorcade than I was to ride IN one.
So I sucked up that fact and started dreaming of being a Bruin or a Red Sock or a Rolling Stone once again.
My precious tiny self-esteem was dealt a severe blow that it desperately needed—a dose of hard-ass reality that more and more parents in this country need to drop on their own offspring: get a grip. Life sucks and is unfair and there are certain facts that will always remain hard, fast and true: pretty, thin chicks with small tits, minuscule brain waves and long long legs will become supermodels—all other chicks will demean and abhor and hate them even as they try to starve/binge/drug their way into the same set of shoes; the fastest, smallest little guy and the biggest dumbest angry guy will both make it into the same professional team sport—no matter what it is—because you can’t hit what you can’t catch.
My dad taught me in eight seconds what kids nowadays don’t know even as they hit their late thirties: not everyone gets to do everything. My dad and my mom worked their asses off just to get to New York City and begin to live and work as illegal immigrants and they adjusted their dream as they went along because they had a family to feed. My dad was a talented musician—he played the accordion in Irish bands on the side when I was growing up. I’ve always had it easy with music as does my son Jack and I believe the talent comes from my father’s side of the family and I’m sure Dad would have loved to make his moolah on the stage but it didn’t work out that way so he became a mechanic. He loved working on engines too. He fed his kids. He bought a house. My mom stayed home and made sure we did as we were told. They both made sure we had our priorities all set straight but even more importantly they made our options crystal clear: that’s why my dad cut right to the chase when it came to questions about what we could or couldn’t “become.” When I decided to give acting a try as a senior in high school, much to his credit my dad’s response was to say it was known to be a rough road but that I should give it a try. He also told me we had no money for me to go to college and if the acting or college thing didn’t work out he could always get me a job down at his company and that he could easily get me into his union. He then showed up at almost every play or show I did in college and as many as he could after I graduated—always coming backstage with a big smile on his face. When I was playing ice or street hockey in leagues as a kid he would show up for a whole game or part of the game almost every time and if I had a bitch about the coach he’d always give me the same response—HE’S the coach, not your father. Shut up and listen.
I’d say when it comes to self-esteem my mother said it best and way more than once to me, my sister Ann Marie, my brother Johnny, my baby sister Betsy, and any and all cousins from this side of the ocean or the other who tried to get above their station in this life.
Pick one:
Just who the hell died and left you in charge, huh?
Well, now—there’s another county heard from.
Why can’t you be more like (insert smart faggy kid from school’s name here)?
Why don’t you learn a lesson or two from (insert faggy cousin’s name here)?
No one asked you for your opinion mister/missy/smartass.
Shut up, cut the cadology and go to bed!
You wanted self-esteem when I grew up? You had to earn it. The only rights you had were to eat whatever it was they put on the table and sleep in a warm bed and get free clothing as long as you show
ed up on time. And after you hit eighteen? Time to go out into the real world.
You want some self-esteem?
Then get up off your lazy ass and DO something.
Invent something, make a great catch, learn how to play the piano, cut the goddam lawn, shovel the fucking sidewalk, paint an interesting picture—anything except sit there whining about how no one pays any attention to you.
You know what kids learn when parents insist on making sure that everyone gets a trophy and everyone wins and nobody loses? They learn that losing doesn’t suck. Which it does. Which is why no one wants to lose and be called a fucking loser. Jesus. You fall down you get up. That’s how you learn how much falling down hurts and how much you never wanna fall down ever again. Christ. Modern moms are desperate to make sure their kids never lose, never get beat up, never get called fat, never get anything negative ever ever ever. It’s okay for the kids to do whatever they FEEL like doing—never say no—just yes yes yes.
Why We Suck Page 11