Getting out of my family’s negative cycle and having kids has been rewarding on a number of levels, but also frustrating — not just from the stuff I’ve been talking about in previous chapters, but also because of the context. Knowing how much I enjoy spending time with the twins makes me hate my parents even more. Speaking of context…

Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s with my parents was rough, especially when I’d watch television. That was the era of The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. I’d sit on the floor and watch these shows in which happy families all hashed out their problems and had great bonding moments in a half hour every week. Meanwhile, my sister had run away, and my parents lived in separate rooms, thinking of ways to kill themselves and end the misery. My house was a chaotic, filthy mess, with sofas covered in sheets and people who didn’t talk to each other. The Bradys would have Alice the maid (another luxury they had that the Carollas could never have imagined) call everyone down for dinner and the happy kids would run down and sit around the table.

Then we’d have little Bobby Brady in his plaid sweater, staring blankly ahead, playing with his food. Inevitably, someone would ask, “What’s wrong?” This made me irate because not only was no one in my family tuned in enough to notice that I was bummed the fuck out, I didn’t even have the Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes to move around with a fork. This is such a fake scene. That would not happen in real life. As depressed as I was, there was no way I would have pushed away any food and said, “I guess I’m just not hungry.” I would have buried all of my feelings in food. If my parents had two potatoes to rub together, I would have been so fucking fat. If being depressed about something was an appetite killer for me, I would have been dead of starvation by the time I was ten. I would have looked like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia.

And on the subject of Brady Bunch style, take a look at the cast from season one to season five. Has anything ever changed so much in a four-to-five-year period? Between season one in 1969 and season five in 1973, everything went from Lawrence Welk to Welcome Back Kotter. The lapels got wider, the hair got huge and everything went paisley. Robert Reed even jumped a couple years ahead to the disco era and contracted HIV. Modern Family is currently on its sixth season. Check out the first season from 2009, and look at it today. Is Phil Dunphy dressed like he’s in a completely different decade in a completely different country? Nope. Just one more reason for me to love Modern Family, and hate my family for making me watch that garbage.

Anyway, back to the Bradys and their meals. I’d never seen my mom make anything that came out of an oven. I think she was afraid that if she put food in there, it would take up room she needed for her head when she decided to end it all. And my dad didn’t even know what a fucking oven was. If you showed him an oven, he’d try to climb in and drive it. I don’t even know why we had utensils in my house. I think they were just there in case someone gave in to the urge to start stabbing each other.

This is why I get incensed when I see my kids not appreciating food. It is a trigger for me. This year we took a family day trip to the beach, and when it came time for lunch we went with the sub sandwich plan. Lynette went off to get me a turkey sub and whatever the kids wanted, while I grabbed a table at the food court. She came back and we all sat to eat. A couple of bites in, I noticed Sonny was chowing down on a sandwich from Subway while the rest of us had hoagies from another place. I asked what was up. Lynette told me Sonny preferred Subway. It was a turkey sub, just like I was eating, but for some reason Sonny’s had to be from Subway instead of where the rest of us had ordered. It wasn’t like the other restaurant didn’t have what he wanted. In fact, he got an inferior version.

My real resentment is not about Subway. If Sonny wants to eat crap, that’s his loss. It is just that growing up, if I was lucky, I went to one restaurant a year. Meanwhile, my kids go to two restaurants per meal.

Much like entertainment options being too plentiful these days, food options are also way too copious. If you take the kids to the Cheesecake Factory for their birthday, they’ll cross into the following birthday by the time they’re done reading the menu. That thing is as thick as Oprah’s ankles. (By the way, if you want to know why America is fat and our economy is in the shitter, it’s because the only factories still in operation have the words Cheesecake and Old Spaghetti in front of them.)

There should be a class-action lawsuit against the 1970s, brought by all the kids whose parents were divorced during those ten years. Like mine.

Don’t get me wrong. This was a good thing. They were terrible together. They were the opposite of chocolate and peanut butter. But it’s not like there was domestic violence. That would require effort. They chose to beat each other mentally and spiritually with disinterested sighs, disappointed groans and one-thousand-yard stares. It was even worse than physical aggression, they acted like the other was dead and the form walking around our house was a ghost.

So with parents this emotionally disconnected from each other, the divorce was actually a blessing. I have no beef with it. A therapist friend of mine says the only thing worse than divorce is a bad marriage. To all the parents reading this and thinking about divorce, I’d say that in an ideal world, you should try to make it work. But if staying together will cause more damage to your kids than separating, then just rip off the bandage.

But, please, if you decide to split up, consider the timing. There’s a window between when the kids are really young and won’t remember what happened, and after the ninth grade, when they’re going to hate your guts no matter what, when you just have to tough it out. It’s your job as a parent to experience some discomfort for the greater good of your child and your community. Stay together between the ages of four and fourteen. Not just for you and for your kid, but for me and my wallet. Unless you want to give me back the tax money I part with to pay for school counselors and social workers to deal with your mess of a kid.

My issue with my parents’ divorce wasn’t that it happened. It was what they each did after the split. Because it was the ’70s when he got divorced, Jim Carolla turned into a regular Bob Guccione. My dad looked like he sold aluminum siding when he was married, but as soon as their marriage was over (I’d argue it never even started), he was rocking platform shoes, a medallion resting on the chest hair you could see because his shirt was undone to the navel and clear nonprescription glasses. He sported a huge Jew-fro, despite the fact that we’re not remotely Jewish. I think the most atrocious thing I ever saw him in were jeans that laced up in the front and the rear. It was like a swinging seventies starter pistol went off when the papers were signed, and he decided, “Hey, I’m making the scene. I’ve got to get laid now that I’m forty-four.” He went from Rob Petrie to Phil Spector overnight.

Compare that to my mom. She packed on about forty pounds and stopped dyeing her hair. So when the roots grew out, it looked like she was wearing a gray Nazi helmet with a tuft of red in the back. She kept the medium-long hair, about shoulder length, but the first seven inches were gray and the rest was red. It was convenient because, like the rings of a tree telling you its age, this was a clear delineation of when she finally gave up. She died on the inside and, ironically, stopped dyeing on the outside.