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

Hey, car manufacturers, how about a nice middle ground? A Goldilocks zone, where I can get out comfortably without denting the car next to me? What’s that first opening for? “Hey, I need to let my ferret out to pee?” Not only that, but all the parking spots are getting smaller and all the cars are getting bigger. Plus, our fat asses are getting bigger, too. This is a disaster. Statistics I just made up show that this opening issue is the reason for the 92 percent increase in car-door dings. All I’m saying is let’s treat car doors like a vagina, we don’t want it so tight we can’t slide in, but also not so wide you feel like a tube sock alone in a dryer.

Anyway, on to you, Sonny, and your first wheels. Don’t get anything too cool. A lot of cops are car guys. They were dudes who loved cars and took the cop gig so that they could do burn-outs, and maybe get into a high-speed chase. So, as car guys, cops will be quick to pull over a Lamborghini, just to check it out. You want something nondescript that blends in to get around this. One of my good friends intentionally drives a Volvo station wagon so that he won’t get pulled over. That guy has pretty much circumnavigated the globe while tipsy, and has never once been pulled over because he drives the official vehicle of upper-middle-class soccer moms. So, Sonny boy, take a booze-soaked page from his playbook. (I don’t want to get him in trouble by naming him, so I will keep this alcoholic anonymous.)

Speaking of getting pulled over. Let Pops give you both a couple of tips on getting out of a ticket. Natalia, you’re going to be a good-looking young woman, so you should be fine flirting your way out of a ticket. Sonny, you’ll be in tougher shape. You’ll be a handsome young man, too, but the number of gay male cops who will let you off when you flash your pearly whites is going to be pretty tiny, and any female cops who pull you over will probably be more interested in Natalia, if you know what I mean.

I don’t know if you guys recall, but back in 2014 I actually got pulled over with both of you in the backseat. I had not been pulled over in seven years, thanks to my radar detector keeping me aware of all the spots where the cops hang out at the bottom of hills, waiting to pounce. Plus, I always drove with one eye in the rear-view mirror. Not the safest move, but in Los Angeles you have to drive scared.

On this particular day, we were driving to the ocean. In an attempt to avoid a traffic snarl, I made a last-second decision to hop off one freeway and onto another. I sped up to hit the off ramp and instantly saw a California Highway Patrol cruiser in my rear view. He didn’t have his radar going, so my detector hadn’t gone off. I was just a target of opportunity. My usual cop Spidey-sense let me down. He hit the rollers and pulled me over. I was doing eighty.

By the way, the top speed on the car we were driving was 177 miles per hour. I hadn’t done anything unsafe. The most dangerous thing about the whole scenario was him pulling me over and getting out of his car to walk to my driver’s side window. He was much more likely to get clipped after he got out of his cruiser than any potential accident I could have caused. But anyway. ..

I knew you were both in the backseat and it was a teachable moment. I had my license and registration ready to go before he even got to my window. And I didn’t fight with him. When he said, “I pulled you over because you were going eighty,” I didn’t shoot back, “Come on, it couldn’t have been more than seventy-three.” I just said, “I understand.” When he asked for a reason, I told him the truth, “I was going on one ramp and changed my mind at the last second and just kind of blanked.”

The first thing I knew was that this cop hadn’t been lying in wait with a radar gun. Those guys are ticket-writing machines. They exist to write tickets; that’s their mandate. So if you get hit with one of those quota-meeting assholes, you’re getting a ticket, no matter how you react. I knew I was just low-hanging fruit for this guy, and thus had a chance to sweet talk my way out of it. That’s the lesson, if you start arguing or give a bunch of excuses, cops are going to give you the ticket just to prove the point. If you push back, they’ll make sure you know who’s in charge. Make them not want to give you a ticket. Make them feel bad for doing their job.

It worked. He let me off with a warning, and we then sped well over the limit all the way to the beach. It wasn’t because I was a celebrity; the guy didn’t recognize me. It was because I was a cop-killer with kindness. I hope you will always remember this little nugget of wisdom.

But just in case you have too many brushes with the po-po, here’s another tip. I once got pulled over on Van Nuys Boulevard doing seventy-five in a thirty-five miles per hour zone. Obviously, I knew I was way over the limit, and that there was no wiggle room. I fully expected a ticket. When the cop started asking me all the usual questions, he threw in an extra one I wasn’t expecting: “Where’d you get that hat?” I forgot that I was wearing an LAPD hat that someone had given me. It was just a coincidence. But being quick on my feet, I told him, in my best humble-brag tone, “I do a little charity work for the boys in blue.” I’d probably done one celebrity golf tournament, and was shitfaced the whole time, but I didn’t go into details. He walked to his motorcycle for a minute, then came back and let me off with a warning.

So here’s the tip, a tip of the cap so to speak. Travel with baseball caps for the police department of every municipality in your area. Do what you have to do to get your hands on them. Go to the local precinct, and say you have a sick kid who loves the cops or something, and then put them in a box in your backseat and swap them as you cross county lines.

While we’re on caps, here’s a great idea that I never got around to manufacturing. Take this and run with it, kids. This simple device will help you and all drivers avoid tickets while using the HOV lane.

To be honest, I fly solo in the HOV all the time. You have to in Los Angeles, if you want to get anywhere. What I do is lean the passenger seat back, and pull the shade down on the passenger’s side, like the sun is bothering Granny’s cataracts. I’ll even pretend to be talking to that person: “Grandma, all the kind words you had about my car headliner have been nullified by your hurtful comment about my double chin.”

It’s simple, just two hooks that clip over the passenger side headrest, attached to a baseball cap. That way, cops coming up from behind think that there’s someone tall in the passenger seat. It’ll have a drape of black velvet coming down the back so you can’t see through that space at the bottom of the headrest. It’ll just look like you’re commuting with Yao Ming. If you get pulled over, it’s not technically illegal and sometimes cops have a sense of humor. Or they’ll pepper spray your ass. But it’s worth a shot, right?

I’m sorry I’m not going to be around to teach you how to drive, Natalia. I would like the challenge. I know saying this in print will further paint me as the misogynist ape that a lot of people think I am, but chicks can’t drive. I don’t let your mother drive when we go out together unless I’m drunk. Which is often.

On my short-lived Speed Channel show, we did a bit where the other hosts and I had to teach models to drive stick shifts in high-performance cars. I ended up with a ditzy actress in a Dodge Viper. This thing has 600 horsepower, 650 foot-pounds of torque and a super-hard clutch. It’s a grizzly bear, the last of the muscle cars. I was in the passenger seat, and I didn’t want to end up crashing through a mall like the Blues Brothers so I knew I had to make sure my lessons got through. The first thing people do when they learn to drive stick is let the clutch out too quickly without giving the car enough gas. So I said to this chick, “Give me a safe word. Something I can say to remind you to put the clutch in.” She said, “Voltaire.” I have no idea where that came from. So I told her “When I say Voltaire, take your left foot and push it to the floor.” Lo and behold, the plan actually worked. Saying “Voltaire” over and over got pretty annoying after a while, but it proved that if I could teach her to drive a manual transmission, I could teach anyone.