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This isn’t coming from some unknown singer/songwriter at a coffeehouse. This was a Billboard number-one song the year after I was born. This is what I grew up with. My parents lapped this shit up.

When I was somewhere in single digits my mom read one of those 1970s parenting books about how not to fuck up your kid. She must have fallen asleep before the end. I guess there weren’t enough pictures. When you’re reading one of these books, it’s already too late. The damage is done. Somewhere in the book it told her not to say, “I don’t like you,” but rather, “I don’t like what you do.” So at one point she used that line on me and I fired back instantly with, “I am what I do.” I must have been seven at the time, but I already knew that she was feeding me a bunch of hippie nonsense.

This is the same “love the si

So I bring the opposite of this message to my parenting. My kids are their actions. I’m never going to pull that “no matter what you do, I love you” bullshit. If So

Among the other hippie bullshit my mom adhered to was her biorhythm wheel. For those of you who’ve never heard of this (and congratulations on that, you were raised by sane people) it’s supposedly calibrated to your birthday to tell you what your biorhythms are and whether you’re going to have a good day. There’d be something called an “extra critical” day when you were in transition from one phase to another during which it was not a good idea to operate a motor vehicle, leave the house or do anything really. At least, that’s how my mom used it. To her, every day was an extra critical day. Or so it seemed. Any time I needed her to do anything, like give me a ride to Teddy Lewis’s house three miles away in Van Nuys, it seemed to be an extra critical day and she needed to continue vegetating in our Valley shitbox. She actually had a twenty-four-hour-notice policy for getting a ride so she could consult the biorhythm wheel. I kid you not.

This thing that ruled my mom’s life when I was a kid was about as scientific as a mood ring. But it allowed her to validate the lazy, downtrodden, checked out, scared-of-life lifestyle she had come to know and love, and thus make no attempt to change it. It was as if for every decision she consulted a Magic Eight Ball with only one fortune, reading, “Fuck Off.”

So growing up in this depressing soup definitely damaged me. And I won’t do that to my kids. My mom is still living this way. I’ve always said that she has three modes: “has a cold,” “just getting over a cold,” or “feels something coming on.” This is a great way to get out of stuff. Once people learn you’re that person, they stop expecting anything. No matter what, I will be there for my kids. Plus I never get colds because I’m not one of those anti-vaccinating, Purell-soaked cowards.

My mother is incapable of admitting or acknowledging happiness. I once bet my buddy Ray that if he called her and she said she was doing “good,” instead of “okay” or “fine,” I would give him a thousand dollars. There was a risk. Ray doesn’t call my mom often, so if he rang she might put on a brave face and lie. But I felt confident. He called her up and asked how she was doing. Her immediate answer was “not so good.” I never even needed to take my wallet out.

Here’s another move my mom had, and still has, that I will never pull on my kids. Whenever you ask her anything, there is a slow, long exhale before she answers. You could ask her something simple like what time it was and when she was finished deflating herself it would be a full minute later than when you asked. Every question is met with a tired-of-life sigh as if to say, “I wish this breath were my last.”

I would rather have been physically abused than lived with the total zeros that my parents were. My house was as lively as a funeral at a methadone clinic.