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

When I was a writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live , before I had kids, if there was a weekend shoot planned, the word would get around: “Someone has to go with Uncle Frank to the meatball festival in Conejo.” All the writers would say, “Ah, fuck, I don’t want to go.” Let’s be honest, no one wanted to go. But if you had kids you had an automatic out, you were off that list. It would be like, “Hey, man, I have a daughter. I haven’t seen her in a week. She has a soccer thing.” So the message to all the single dudes? Get in the bus with Uncle Frank. I was actually routinely punished at work for not having kids. And now that I actually have kids, I still don’t cash in and use them as an excuse.

By the way, I’ve been using the word “kid” a lot. This is on purpose, because I find that all these “I’m a better parent than you” assholes tend to use the word “child” instead of “kid.” They also like using “home” instead of “house.” When parents, especially mothers, get defensive and vocal they tend to say, “When you come into my home and use that tone in front of my child …”

Anyway, before we move on, let me tell you a little bit about my children… I mean kids.

My twins were born on June 7, 2006. They were supposed to be pulled from Mama Carolla on June 6, 2006, but even though I’m not superstitious or religious (as if there’s a difference) I thought it just seemed weird to have my kids on 666. So we pushed it by a day. I mean, if you had two flight choices, September 11 or September 12, any level-headed person after 2001 would fly on September 12. Lynette was having a scheduled C-section, so we had the option of delaying it by a day. Actually, on June 5th, Lynette started having contractions and I thought we were going early. I remember that we were watching The Apprentice and, like any good husband, I used the TiVo pause button to time the contractions.

The contractions were just those fake Braxton-Hicks things (up until then I thought Braxton-Hicks were the guys who sang “Smoke from a Distant Fire”), and two days later we were in the hospital extracting the kids. At this time, I was doing my morning radio show. Obviously, I couldn’t be there, but the show must go on, so Kimmel filled in. I remember sitting in the room listening to my sports guy Dave Dameshek doing his weekly “Jerk Report,” instead of listening to the nurses ordering me around and asking to see my wristband every time I came in and out.

Anyway, they were born and were completely healthy. Sonny was six pounds four ounces, Natalia was five pounds twelve ounces. I’m not going to pretend I know which one came out first. That pisses Lynette off. I got the quiz not too long ago. “Which one was born first?” “Um… Natalia.” “No” “Uh… the other one?” “Yes.” “And how far apart were they?” “I dunno. Two or three feet?”

Why “Sonny” and “Natalia” you might ask? I’m half Italian and my wife is full-blooded Italian so we wanted Italian-sounding names. Sonny is short for Santino, taken from The Godfather . Natalia gets her name from an actress I beat off to… I mean interviewed on Loveline , Natalia Cigliuti. Ironically, she’s from Uruguay and isn’t Italian at all but it sounded good, like it was from the old country. When I called Jimmy to reveal the names on the radio show he commented that Sonny and Natalia sounded like an old couple from Brooklyn. “Sonny and Natalia are coming over and they’re bringing manicotti.” He also pointed out that Sonny’s middle name was Richard (Lynette’s father’s name), which shortens to Dick. So not only did he have a pornish name, “Sonny Dick,” but also sounded like my most hated beverage, Sunny D. Then, just for a little extra salt in the wound, Jimmy noted that my kids were born on Prince’s birthday. (Though Prince would probably argue he wasn’t even born, but created from a purple energy cloud farted by a unicorn.)

I also wanted them to have solid, classic names. Not made up bullshit names we have nowadays. I don’t know what’s up with all the… den names? Aiden, Jayden and Cayden. That’s a soap opera name, not a real name. There’s no Aiden, Jayden or Cayden who’s going to dive on a grenade in Afghanistan to save his platoon. We’re all obsessed with giving our kids unique names to make them feel special. A list came out in 2013 and some of the most popular names were Django, Katniss, Atticus, Asher and Serafina. Listen, you’re not going to get into Harvard because you have a unique name that a hundred other white parents in your town also thought was unique. Just fucking name your kid Dave and let him go out and carve a life for himself.

A lot of people do the thing when they have twins where they give them both names that begin with the same letter. I was against that from the start. My best buddy growing up, Ray, has three brothers Rob, Ronnie and Rich. I used to always give him and his mom shit for this. I mean, how lazy can you be? This came back to bite me in the ass, though. I was once complaining to Jimmy about something stupid Ray had done and the long history of idiotic decisions that family had made. I went on to say that it really said something about how lazy and retarded that whole family was that all the names began with the same letter and that it was probably so that they’d have fewer letters to remember with their already feeble minds. Jimmy then reminded me about his brother Jon, his sister Jill, his mother Joan and his father James. I’ll have to remember not to bring that up again in front of his new daughter, Jane.

Speaking of Jimmy, him being my bestie, he was the first to come see the kids when they got home from the hospital. It was kind of awkward, though. He showed up with Sara Silverman, his girlfriend at the time. Lynette was hormonal and feeling overwhelmed with how disorganized things were at home — diaper pail in the wrong place, spider in the bassinet (both true stories, btw), shit like that. So she was crying. I didn’t even know they had come in. When they went into the room they just saw Lynette in a heap of tears and me standing there like a stooge. I remember the look from Sara like, “What did you do, you monster?!” This has happened to me more than once. A few years later, Lynette was out of town and I was alone with the kids. Despite being fine most of the night, the minute their nanny walked in, they started crying. She looked at me like I’d been using them as tennis racquets. Another time, Lynette had gone to see the Killers play over at Kimmel’s outdoor stage and came home to the kids crying. She sprinted in yelling, “What’s going on, what are you doing?” I said, “I was trying to dry her hair in the microwave, what do you think? They’re babies, they’re crying. But please, feel free to make it my fault.”

See, I even get the dad shaming in my home about my children.

This is a book for you parenting realists out there. Dads who want to crack a beer and go to the garage instead of to Gymboree class, and moms who can’t wait to go back to work after maternity leave. This is for anyone who has ever rolled over in bed after a long day of “Mommy Mommy Mommy Daddy Daddy Daddy” and said to your partner, “What the fuck were we thinking?” Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids. I just hate what our society has turned parenting into. It used to be enough to feed, shelter and clothe your kid. Now I talk to the dads at the two o’clock Saturday basketball game who just got back from the soccer tournament in San Juan Capistrano that their kid was playing in that same morning. If he skips that hundred-mile round trip, if he blows that off and only goes to the basketball game, he’s a pariah. If my dad had put down his cigar and gotten off the sofa, he would have been a saint. So this is a book for all the other dads out there like me, who yearn for the days of a lower bar. You’re welcome.