by Adam Carolla
I’m sure it would be little comfort to her, but being pregnant and giving birth is as big a pain in the ass as it is a pain in the vagina. The first thing that happens when you get pregnant is every dickhead tells you how it’s going to change your life. It’s not that big a deal. What is it with the worrywarts who want to talk you into being scared of shit? What do they get out of it? They’ll be like, “What about college? Better start saving now.” Let’s get the kid out of the uterus before we start trying to get him into Harvard. Or especially the guys who will say, “Forget your sex life. It’s gone. You might as well just rip your dick off and stab yourself in the eye with it.”
Then when it comes time to give birth, you’ll get a lot of idiots talking to you about “natural birth.” People will say, “You know, you don’t need to have a physician.” I understand I might not need one, but we do have them. These are the same jag-offs who say, “We can do dentistry without numbing.” Yeah, but you do have something called Novocain, right? Go get it. We’re not on a Civil War battlefield. Why are some kinds of progress good but other kinds bad? Tomorrow I’m leaving for New York to do a television show and meet the woman who’s editing this book and it’s going to take me five hours in the air, but according to a handful of nut jobs, I should take a covered wagon and eat my own leg on the Donner Pass. These natural birthers are right up there with the restore-your-foreskin people, who are just wackos who don’t give a fuck about restoring foreskin—they’re trying to restore a hole in their childhood by filling it with a cause. Getting so wrapped up in something that falls under the heading of Who Gives a Shit? means there are deep underlying psychological issues. Whether it’s natural birth, restoring foreskin, or toxin flushing through colonics, stop talking to me about it and start talking to a therapist.
Another aspect of our relentless androgynous culture is getting men involved in the whole birthing process. This happened to me. First they were like, “Hey, we have the sonogram. Here’s a picture of the kids. Keep it. They’ll get a kick out of it when they’re older.” I replied, “I don’t think they’ll care.” The woman said, “How could it hurt?” I shot back, “How could it help?” Did she think someday my son would be showing this to his high school football buddies? They looked like two hamsters in formaldehyde.
Why are men talked into being in the room during the birth? I would have preferred not to be in the room. First, it’s not a big room. It’s not a gymnasium or a blimp hanger. It’s small and cluttered with people and equipment. Do you need another jack-off standing around who doesn’t know what the fuck is going on? We have that policy across the board in life. You can’t mosey behind the counter of a McDonald’s and start making your own Big Mac. So why here? All they do in hospitals is tell you, “Excuse me, sir, you need to wait,” “You can’t go in there,” et cetera. Yet with that room, it’s “Come on down.” They might as well put western doors on that fucking room with a guy who looks like Jed Clampett saying, “Come on in, pull up a stool, sit a spell.”
Before you go into the OR for the C-section, they put you in a holding room where you nervously wait for go time. This was a medium-sized room with two beds and one bathroom. We were the only couple occupying it. As I was leaving the bathroom, I ran into the nurse, who told me in a rude tone, “Sir, that bathroom’s only for patients. Your bathroom’s down the hall.” I answered her the way I answer all shitheads with a pointless agenda: with a vacant stare and subtle “So what are you going to do?” Later on, she overheard me talking on the cell phone and calling her a bitch and had to swing by to make sure I knew she heard me. After the kids were born, some nervous coworkers came up and basically apologized for her, saying she did that with everyone, she’s not a nice person, and they don’t know what to do about her. I told them I had a novel idea—perhaps they should fire her ass. This was the most stressful day of my life, not counting the Rams’ first Super Bowl appearance, and I gotta have Fuckface Nightingale up my ass engaging in one of my least favorite behaviors—the lecture about the thing that has already happened and will never happen again. Hey cunt, I just emptied my bladder and we’re going down to the OR in the next twenty minutes, so unless I funnel a twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Best, I doubt I’ll be heading back into the commode. And it’s not like I’m going to be back the following week with a new set of twins. I, with the help of my insurance, just gave your establishment thousands of dollars. Perhaps you could holster the stink-eye and get back to your first love … mercy killing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it is up to all of us to verbally abuse these douchenozzles. The more they’re humored, the more empowered they become and the worse society gets.
And then there’s cutting the cord. This story is a metaphor for my life. It’s another example of somebody trying to get me interested in something I’m not interested in and not taking no for an answer. “Would you like to cut the umbilical cord?” “No thanks, I’m cool.” “You’ll regret it if you don’t.” “I’ll take my chances.” “It’s a real important experience.” “Is the guy who normally cuts the umbilical cord not available? If so, tell me. If not, please shut the fuck up.” I’ve wasted at least a third of my life telling people no for the fifth time. I understand why they think it might be an important experience for me; what I don’t understand is what’s in it for them to convey that to me for the fifth time. And when did everyone buy into this notion that we had to start bonding with our kids at zygote? Here’s how you bond with your kids and imprint positive parental imagery: You be a good fucking parent. You take an interest in what your kids are interested in, you encourage them, you communicate with them, and you see if you can keep the beatings and the molestation to every other weekend. If cutting the cord created some kind of magical bond, then how come none of us have that with the doctor who cut our cords? Does anyone even know the name of the guy who cut their cord or where they are now? No. Why? Because we don’t give a shit. And do you think Bill Gates or Winston Churchill or Evel Knievel’s dads cut their cords? Fuck no. And they turned out pretty good.
Anyway, I told anyone who’d listen that not only did I not want to cut the cord, I didn’t even want to be in the building. I thought I’d be out in the parking lot handing out cigars. But the next thing you know, somebody handed me a pair of shears and said, “Start cutting.” I said, “But they already cut the umbilical cord.” We were standing six feet away over a clear plastic table. The guy said, “Oh, you don’t cut it when it’s attached. It’s just symbolic.” Now I was confused and pissed. The entire time assholes were telling me how important it was to cut the cord and I was saying I don’t want to be performing surgery on my wife, they neglected to mention the part where I was cutting a half inch off the cord after it had already been cut. I attempted to put the right-hand cutting shears into my left hand and almost dropped them onto my daughter’s eyeball in the process. I was, in the end, forced to cut my kids’ cords, and I can guarantee you that any of the unspoken good vibes that were created with my kids because of this act are far outweighed by the deep-seated resentment I have toward them for forcing me into it.
And in our effort to give every kid a gender-identity disorder, the first thing we do is put them in the pink-and-blue-striped beanies.
Not pink or blue. Pink and blue. Are we trying to turn every child into a David Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust he-she? And once they go into the nursery, there’s thirty kids spread out. They’re all swaddled up in these Tupperware bins, and one of the ways you can recognize your kid, or at least narrow down the field, is by gender. If they showed me two kids—one with a blue beanie and the other with a pink beanie—next to each other, I’d go, “There are the Carolla twins.” Now when you get hold of them, especially when you have twins, you can’t tell them apart. I still can’t tell them apart. The brainiac who had the idea of a confusing, ambiguous, light-blue-and-light-pink-striped beanie should be shot. Have any other great ideas? How about instead of red for stop and green for go we mix them and have one big brown
light? Fucking retard. And is the fifty-fifty version any cheaper than a solid powder-blue or pink beanie? No. It’s probably more expensive. Just buy a thousand pink units and a thousand blue units and stop the gender bending.
Giving birth is tough, but let’s not treat it like it’s anything more than it is. I can’t stand the mommy bloggers, the women who have kids and then decide to go online and write about the dos and don’ts. You know, hard-hitting topics like “Sack Lunch. Friend or Foe?” It’s all the same forty-year-old white chicks. They act as if they’re the first women on the planet to give birth. It’s so narcissistic. Meanwhile the Nicaraguan woman who is actually taking care of their kids has four of her own in high school. Actually three dropped out, but the point is that she crapped out four kids when she was nineteen through twenty-one and they’re all fine. The whole world crapped out kids before these bitches and obviously they were crapped out, too. You’re forty-one and all of a sudden after you have a kid you must write a children’s book and a blog to explain to other people how to do it. You’re telling us stuff we’ve all known for a billion years. It would be as if I discovered beating off at age forty and had to tell all my friends. “Attention fellas, there’s a way to have an orgasm without hiring a prostitute. You grab your cock, and you just pull it. It feels awesome. Are you listening? Why aren’t you writing this down?”
Moving on to the end of life. Aging sucks. Here’s how, as a guy, you know there’s no God: The only parts of a man’s body that keep growing are your balls, your ears, and your nose, the three parts of your body you wish got smaller. Not your biceps and your cock. Those wither away. The shit you wish would grow gets smaller and the stuff you don’t want to grow sags. It’s no picnic for the ladies, either. At least as men get older they get better-looking. The hair gets gray and they get dignified. Dr. Drew gets sexier as he gets older. There’s not one guy who’s said, “Liz Taylor. I wouldn’t have hit that at nineteen, but now that she’s seventy-five I want to nail her. I’ll break that other hip.”
You also know you’re starting to get old when you go into the swimming pool wearing a hat and sunglasses. When you’re young you’re frolicking, doing cannonballs, and playing Marco Polo. The more you wear going into the pool, the older you are. I’m only forty-five and I go into the pool with a shirt, hat, and sunglasses, which means I’m this close to going in with a three-piece suit, spats, a pocket watch, and a monocle.
We insist on making fun of old people in this society. Lots of jokes about Grandpa and his Depends, how slow Grandma drives, et cetera. Considering we all hope to live to a ripe old age, this seems horribly ill conceived. Making fun of a group you pray to one day be part of would be like joining the Klan right before you made the transformation that Robert Downey Jr. did in Tropic Thunder. Why would we make fun of something that, God willing, we’re going to become? I suggest we get back to basics—making fun of Polacks and Puerto Ricans.
I love when the news shows people, usually from another country, who just hit their one hundredth birthday. They inevitably ask them the stupid and predictable question about what they did to live so long. The answer is never from eating fruit and exercising every day. They tell you that they get up, have a shot of brandy, smoke a pack of Lucky Strikes, eat a Twinkie wrapped in Canadian bacon, go to work at the asbestos factory where they have a hearty lunch of Styrofoam peanuts, then come home for six tumblers of grain alcohol. By the way, these people probably drank tap water every day of their hundred years, loved peanuts, and never touched a drop of Purell.
Then, after we get the noninformation from the unwrapped mummy on the news, we get to hear the anchors laugh and say, “He’s one hundred years young.” I hate that cliché. Even worse is “He died of a broken heart.” People always say that when a person’s spouse dies and then he dies a couple days later. It’s dumb. Technically, everyone dies of a broken heart. It stops beating. And the other stupid death-related cliché is “You can sleep when you’re dead.” I don’t think that’s been confirmed. You may be able to sleep when you’re dead, but what if you can’t? What if it’s like flying coach when you’re up against the bulkhead and your seat won’t recline? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not taking any chances. I’m gonna take a nap.
After you die of a broken heart, your poor relatives are going to have to cough up for a funeral. This is another time when dickheads try to extract money from you with guilt. We do from the cradle to the grave. When you have kids, they’ll try talking you into the expensive pre-preschool by saying things like “Don’t you want your kid to have a head start? Don’t you want this for your child?” No, he’s two, he’s eating a Lego and shitting himself right now. I don’t need to spend the equivalent of a down payment on a house so he can play with finger paints. I’ve already regaled you with the tale of my son and the corrective helmet. They play on your guilt. That’s from ages zero to ten. Then at some point you die, and it becomes “I think your uncle Ted would want the Ambassador casket.” Ted’s dead. He’s not part of the conversation. I know you’re trying to guilt me into the velvet-lined coffin with gold trim, but I’m pretty sure his corpse is indifferent to which box it decays in.
Though I do think I could make a lot of money with my idea for a big-and-tall funeral parlor. Everyone is getting bigger nowadays, so I’m sure the coffins and grave plots have had to kick it up a notch, too. Why not a big-and-tall funeral parlor? I’d call it Larger Than Life. I could even sell the funeral suits for the deceased at my big-and-tall men’s shop, Big Sir.
I don’t like to tell people about deaths in my family. It’s not because I’m narcissistic or too wrapped up in my own shit, it’s because it puts people in an uncomfortable position. There’s that weird awkward pause. Then that person feels compelled to offer up some loss in their life, and it’s never a direct comparison. “Oh, my cat just died, so I know what you’re going through.” This is usually followed by the “If there’s anything I can do.…” As if you’re going to take them up on it. “You know, a fresh coat of wax on the car would really take the sting out of Grandpa’s demise.”
I went to a funeral once where the rabbi mispronounced the name of the deceased no fewer than twenty-eight times. There should be a policy where if the person speaking says, “Although I didn’t know Gabe …” you should be able to shout, “Then get the fuck offstage!” The Sandman from Showtime at the Apollo should come out and sweep you off. Sit down and let someone who knew Gabe up there. At my funeral I don’t want some guy saying, “I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Alan Carelli.…” This is one drawback to the Jews doing their funerals the next day. They could use a little extra prep time to get off-prompter.
I want a big turnout at my funeral. Not for me, but for the people I leave behind. I want them to be surrounded by others. I want people around my widow and my many trophy widows. Plus, open pews at a funeral is like a restaurant where there’s only one other couple eating there. It’s sad.
And I want it abundantly clear that I wouldn’t want you to go on working after I die. People say, “That’s what he would have wanted.” No, I want you to drop everything. Clear your calendar. I want a national day, nay, a national week of mourning with flags at half staff across the country. I want the flags on the greens of golf courses at half staff.
And I want wailing and crying. I need a big black woman to throw herself on the casket and say, “Take me.” I want the entire cast of Precious screaming like banshees and trying to jump into the open grave. I’d never get that kind of emotion out of my own family. It would be like having Marcel Marceau there. And they’re so cheap, they’d probably try to make me bring the champagne to my own wake.
When my grandfather Lazlo died, the Carollas went with the most pathetic postmortem option possible: the Neptune Society. This is the group that cremates your loved one and scatters the ashes in the ocean. Sounds classy, right? Think again. You just call them up, “Hey, Grandpa’s dead,” and they say, “All right, Bert will swing by in about forty-
five minutes. He’ll probably drop by Arby’s, get a little dinner first.” In my grandfather’s case, the guy just showed up at four A.M. in a station wagon. Not a hearse, a regular station wagon. He filled out a couple of forms and tossed Grandpa in the back of the wagon. I’m surprised he didn’t put the corpse in the passenger seat so he could use the diamond lane on the way to the crematorium. We never saw the body again. I don’t even know if they cremated him. There were no oceanside speeches, no golden urns, no rose petals floating in the bay. That would cost an additional fifty bucks. Just some dude and a fake-wood-paneled station wagon. It cost something like $280. My grandfather’s funeral cost less than my blender.
The only less dignified option would be to leave him out at the curb on trash day. Here in L.A. the black bin is for trash, blue is for recycling, and brown is for dead relatives.
Over the years I have prepared a list of things I want to do before I die:
Have my hands registered as weapons.
Get kicked out of a casino for winning.
Jump into a body of water with a knife between my teeth.
Have a cape removed onstage.
Have a sports jersey pulled over a nice suit.
Be killed by the person I told to kill me if I started to become a zombie.
Wipe down a gun.
Silently communicate/point to my watch underwater.
Punch out my undercover partner who is about to say something he shouldn’t and blow our cover.
Play bass in an all-black band, be the only white guy, and whisper something onstage to the conga player and then laugh.
Put my hand over the mouth of a beautiful woman to stop her from screaming and alerting the bad guys.