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

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, which 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.”