I’d like to close this chapter on a positive note, showing that sometimes participating in your kids’ lives can be worthwhile. Let me tell you about a nice outing I recently had with Sonny. As you know, Sonny and I have enjoyed a few delightful trips to the vintage-car races on Coronado Island. It’s always great working on my wheels and bunking up with my boy, but Sonny snores, even though he always denies it the next morning.
I don’t understand the guy who denies that he snores. I’m sorry to say that Kimmel is one of them. What do I stand to gain by accusing you of snoring? The whole interaction is uncomfortable. Why would I lie? Do you think I’m a perv that gets some sort of sexual gratification by making people think they have sleep apnea? What kind of sadistic maniac would you have to be to tell someone who lay there motionless all night, like Michael Jackson in the waning moments of his life, when he woke up, “Hey, man, you were snoring last night. I couldn’t get any sleep.” I said it because it’s true. Whether it’s snoring, halitosis or the piece of parsley stuck in your teeth, when someone musters the courage to tell you an uncomfortable truth, believe it.
Anyway, whether he wants to believe it or not, Sonny is a snorer. And not an average snorer. Most snoring is rhythmic, so you can eventually tune it out like white noise. Most snoring eventually becomes like living near train tracks; after a while you just stop hearing the rumble. Sonny’s snoring had no rhyme or reason to it — it was just startling and definitely prevented Pops Carolla from getting his full eight hours. After one year at Coronado of me dragging ass after a tough night, I ended up buying him Breathe Right strips and they worked like a charm.
This whole event takes place on an active military base, so there are badges and wristbands and all those sorts of things involved. The guy who runs the vintage-race portion of the weekend’s events said he could come by and get my signature early, since he would be at the track before us, so we wouldn’t have as many hoops to jump through when Sonny and I arrived at the track. But because I had to get up at seven that morning to shoot Catch a Contractor in Corona, I couldn’t wait for him at home in the morning. So we agreed to meet at six that afternoon, after the shoot. I got home at five-thirty, exhausted as hell and depressed from spending a day in Corona. When you compare Corona, California, to Tijuana, Tijuana gets offended. It’s the opposite of a Corona beer commercial. No sandy beaches, just dirt lawns and depressed Mexicans. Adding insult to injury, Sonny and Natalia were on my bed with the vibration mode going as I limped into the bedroom. When I asked Sonny what he had done that day, he replied, “Just chilled.” The fact that he chose the word chill, while I was broiling in Corona, really stuck the dagger in.
Anyway, I saw the clock next to the bed and noticed that it was past six and my guy still hadn’t shown up. I was getting to the end of my nap window. If I didn’t go down now, it would be too late to bother taking a nap. Now I could still grab a good twenty-five, wake up, watch SportsCenter, have a beer and get back to bed at a reasonable hour, so I would be able get up at seven the next morning to drive to another hellhole… this one called Whittier.
I told Lynette, “I’ve got a guy coming by to drop off some stuff. It’s six forty-five; he was supposed to be here at six. I’m going to crash. Just tell him to drop off whatever he needs to.” I then napped and woke up twenty-five minutes later, as planned. I felt a little bit better, but I still had heatstroke from Corona and was staring down the barrel of another miserable day. And then the pile-on began. Lynette said, “Wouldn’t you know it, the second you left the room to nap the guy showed up and rang the buzzer.” I asked, “So what do we have, lanyards, wristbands…?” She said, “Nope, he said he needed your signature.” Still shaking off the fog of a nap I asked, “But he left the stuff behind to sign?” I’m sure you know where this is headed. Lynette said, “No, he couldn’t leave the paperwork, he just took off.” Noticing my stunned stare, she said, “I didn’t want to wake you up. You said you were exhausted.” At first, I was pissed. I wanted to say, “What happened last time you woke me up from a nap, did I throw a samurai sword at your head?” I bit my tongue and internalized my fury. It was my fault, after all. I had spaced on the part that involved me needing to sign the documents. Usually, I just have someone forge my name, but since we were headed to an active military base, it had to be legit. I was devastated. I just wanted to sit and cry. I was just trying to spend some quality time with my kid and take a little break from my crazy work schedule, a guy was offering a way to make that go easier showed up the second my head hit the pillow and was sent packing, thus ensuring that I’d have to do as many laps around the retard racetrack fixing the situation as I would on the actual racetrack. Could it have gone any other way?
Here’s how this all connects to my trip with Sonny. Like many of my weekends when I go out to race, I try to piggyback a live gig in the area onto the trip to help defray the costs. This time around, I’d landed a private corporate gig. So I was up late the night before the race. After that Thursday night speech to a room full of suits who’d had too much to drink, I woke up the next morning and Sonny was just sitting on the edge of the bed with earbuds in, playing with his iPad. He wouldn’t dream of waking me up. And his Breathe Right strip was sitting on the edge of the nightstand. I asked him why it was there. He said, “It’s not sticky anymore, but I wasn’t sure if we could use it again.” I was filled with pride at his efficiency and cost consciousness.
It was a tight schedule. The day before we had been given a VIP tour of the Jonas Salk institute, then it was on to the corporate gig (I brought Sonny along — I wanted him to see Daddy work). Then on Friday there was a practice race and a qualifying race. I always skip the practice race, but I have to do the qualifying because it determines my starting place for the actual race. But I had gotten a call Tuesday night that week from my agent, James “Babydoll” Dixon. He said he had a gig for me. It was, in agent parlance, “light lifting, and a nice bag,” meaning easy money. But it was in Los Angeles, which would mean I’d need to bring Sonny back home before the actual race. I didn’t want to ruin our great father-son race weekend, but at the time (and probably even now as you read this book) I owed money to lawyers, plural. I had not one, but two bullshit lawsuits going on at this time. I rationalized the whole thing, thinking that Sonny could come out Thursday, have breakfast Friday morning, do the practice and qualifying race as part of my pit crew, then zoom back to Los Angeles. Sonny wouldn’t know the difference between the real and practice race, anyway. But just in case, I asked Babydoll if he could move the gig so I could keep my weekend with the boy intact. Well, he called back two hours later to inform me that whoever had sought me out couldn’t move the gig, and when I didn’t answer right away, they had gone to someone else. Here’s the thing: I needed the money, but needed the experience with my son more. This was God, the Great Magnet, whatever you want to call it, making a point. I needed to have my quality bonding time with Sonny. I was relieved, to be honest.
Then Dixon called back an hour later saying the other guy had dropped out. So I said count me in. But for those few fleeting moments, I was Father of the Year.
CHAPTER 6
THIS IS A little note to my offspring, meant to impart some hard-won wisdom on making that most monumental of purchases… your first set of wheels. While cars may not be as important to you as they are to me (though they should be), the lessons I include can be applied to any major purchase our kids will have to make one day. Just swap the car for whatever you value — boat, helicopter, NFL franchise. Hopefully they will have the bread to make the purchase without asking us for help, right?