Why We Suck (10 page)

    

    In my day self-esteem came from actual performance and a clear understanding of your place in the world. The facts were laid out almost from the get-go-if you wanted to be a model and you were a girl you had to be tall and thin. If you wanted to play baseball there was no goddam wiffle ball or a special "soft" pretend, fakey baseball set up on top of a standing tee-you had to learn how to hit an actual pitched HARD baseball. Which sometimes would hit you in the face if you didn't get out of the way fast enough. Which would break your face. Which would hurt like hell. If you wanted to be in a rock band you had to learn how to sing and actually play an instrument. While on drugs. Lots of drugs. If you were ugly then you were ugly and there was very little hope you were going to change the way you looked unless the baseball that crushed your face rearranged the bones and let you come out the other end looking like George Fucking Clooney. These were the cold, hard facts of life and your parents were in charge of supplying you with every single one of them.

    There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumbass kids can't compete academically so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks and psychotherapists to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a shit what these crackerjack whackjobs tell you-yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.

    I know a couple of autistic children and let me tell you something they both have in common-they are extremely bright and attentive and-much like Rain Man-have individual talents and abilities that would lay your empty little tyke's video game-addled soul to waste. A truly autistic child may be able to reproduce music he or she hears with perfect pitch-entire classical pieces, the rock opera Tommy, the latest hit Broad-way musical-over and over again. OR tell you instantly upon hearing what your birthday is-what day it has fallen on every year for the last four decades. What the weather was on those days. Who the president was at the time. What the number one song on the radio was just before singing it note for note and word for word. THAT'S an autistic child. Not some fat-assed simpleton whose brain has been fried by television and the Xbox and no proper daily attention from his or her supposedly caring parents.

    Maybe your kid is not autistic. Maybe he's just a dolt. And thank your lucky stars for that. Face the facts.

    Autism is up and who knows why-parents who wasted time, their brain cells and a lot of healthy DNA on way too many recreational drugs is this doctor's guess-but I refuse to sit here and believe that half the idiotic offspring I come across even amongst my own friends and family are a part of that problem.

    I recently heard an interview with the brother of acclaimed author Augusten Burroughs. This brother guy invented the gizmo that allows smoke and a small fireworks display to spazz out of electric guitars onstage. He did it while working as a roadie/techie for the band Kiss. Ace Frehley turned to him one day and said Hey, can you make smoke'n shit fly outta my Axe while I'm playin' it? So this guy did so. Not a huge contribution to society but hey-it is what it is and he made a good living at it. The reason I bring this up is: the interview was about a book this brother had written because when he was about fifty years old he almost completely self-diagnosed himself as having Asperger's syndrome.

    In the interview he said that all of his life people thought he was odd. He would talk to people but had trouble making eye contact with them and he knew-somehow, somewhere deep down inside-he was different. Because they wouldn't talk back. They would usually just nod and walk away.

    Uh-huh.

    Here's the textbook definition of the disease:

    Asperger's syndrome is one of several autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Characterized by difficulty in social interaction and restricted, stereotyped interests and activities. People with Asperger's are not usually withdrawn around others, they simply approach others by engaging in a one-sided, long-winded speech about one of their own favorite topics.

    Where I come from, we don't call a guy like that a victim of Asperger's. We just call him an Asshole Who Won't Shut The Fuck Up.

    You wanna find people who don't think it strange or boring or mind-numbing to listen to you ramble on and on and on about what it takes to plug electronic boxes into electro converters and then into tubeless amplifiers THROUGH a remote-access special effects board and blap blappety blap until shit shoots out of a guitar played by a guy wearing fourteen-inch-high platform-heeled leather boots and a girdle?

    Here's the list:

        1. The guy in the girdle

        2. You

        3. People with Kiss T-shirts on

    

    That's it.

    You don't belong in the spectrum of autism disorders. You belong backstage with a shitload of AA batteries and a suitcase full of roman candles.

    Long-winded and one-sided.

    I heard the guy on the radio and believe me, folks, long-winded ain't the least of it. This guy had his head so far up inside his own ass he could be interviewed about his memoir and perform his own colonoscopy at the same time.

    Odd? Yeah-you became a roadie for a rock band that dresses up in superhero costumes and wears twenty-seven pounds of makeup? Where and when is that considered normal. AND you made money at it? Sorry, pal. You don't get to make guitars blow up for a living and then stake a claim as some kind of social retard. Lucky? Yes. Rain Man? No. Not on my planet.

    Two days later I hear another person on the same show-a chick who made a documentary about her brother-another Asperger's victim. This guy was incredibly smart and socially adept but for some reason couldn't keep a job or cook or clean or do his own laundry and therefore was still living with his parents at age forty-two. My cousin has this version of Asperger's. It's called Mikey Ain't Moving Away From Home syndrome. It's a disease that makes you suddenly realize-hey, I gotta good thing goin' here-rent-free-so my ass ain't goin' anywhere. Some guy tried it in Italy a few years ago and his parents kicked him to the curb. He actually took his parents to court-at the same age, forty-two-and the courts told him to grow up and move out. I know a ton of Irish and Italian guys who would still be living at home being waited on hand and foot by their doting mothers if their dads didn't one day decide to lay down the law.

    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.