Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

  When football season started my tenth-grade year, I got the most depressing news of all: I was riding the bench on the junior-varsity football team. Seven years of being a star in Pop Warner and all of a sudden I was a nobody. A combination of not knowing any of the coaches, having a senior playing in front of me in my position, and a genetic hand that was a pair of threes, a six, and two Uno cards led to me watching the game from the bench for the first time in my football career. Up until that point I was all brawn and no brain. Now that it looked like the brawn was gone, I was devastated. The worst part is that I was still friends with all the guys I used to throw around like rag dolls, and now they were all starting over me. It came to a head one day when my buddy Steve Hughes, who was a baseball player but always knew I was the best at football, asked me what happened. It was depressing because he wasn’t razzing me or making fun of me; he honestly wanted to know why I wasn’t good anymore. Kind of like the difference between somebody calling you a fat-ass from their car window and a doctor at a party earnestly asking if he can help with your weight problem. It was at that point I knew I could either roll over or I could go to work. So I decided to go to work.

  I was about 150 pounds, and the coach said if I kept my weight down I’d be starting next year. Let me explain. I called it the junior-varsity team just for simplicity, but it was really called the B-team and it was meant for tenth graders. But as long as you kept your weight under 165 pounds, you could play as a junior or a senior. When Coach Smith came up to me at the banquet and told me not to eat too much, I told him, “No problem.” But I had already made my decision. I was going to have another spoonful of au gratin potatoes and live in the weight room. The following year I would play varsity. I didn’t care if I sat on the bench. I figured if I did it this way, by my senior year, I would have a chance to start. The next year was just an extended training montage from Rocky. (Rocky I, not the gay biracial montage from Rocky III.) By the time the next season had begun, I’d put on thirty-five pounds of muscle and made my way on to the varsity starting offensive line.

  I also did the long snapping. Worst gig in sports. You look through your legs at a skinny white guy who’s standing forty-two feet behind you. With your shoulder pads and helmet on, you can barely move your arms and the plan is to rocket back a spiral that hits him in the chest while the biggest player on the opposing team drives you into the ground. They have a rule against that now because you’re in such a vulnerable position that it’s dangerous. Back then the thinking was if they could jack you up enough and get you to worry more about being driven into the ground than getting the ball to the punter, you’d fuck up the snap. If you complete your task successfully, nobody says a word. But if you snap the ball over the punter’s head or bounce one back to him, that’s all they’re going to discuss the next week. I always thought that if I was in the Mafia and I was going to fix the Super Bowl, I’d pay off the long snapper. He’s the lowest-paid guy on the team and if he throws a missile over the punter’s head that bounces out the back of the end zone, or one off-target snap on a field-goal attempt, it could dramatically change the outcome of the game.

  When the season was over I went right back to the weight room, but first I hit the Denny’s for three Grand Slams. By my senior year I was 210 pounds and starting both ways. It seemed I was able to temporarily overcome my bad genetic hand with hard-boiled eggs, bench presses, and ten years of experience. I led the team in tackles, received the trophy for best defensive player, and was the only person on the squad to get first-team all-league honors on offense.

  Allow me a quick jag. The everyone’s-a-winner bullshit we’re knee-deep in right now goes back a little further than you might think. On offense I played guard, and on defense I played inside linebacker. But if you open up the 1982 North Hollywood High yearbook and look at the pictures of the starting defense, you’ll not find my fat Brillo-covered head among them. It’s ironic because I led the team in tackles and have a trophy in my bar that says BEST DEFENSIVE PLAYER NORTH HOLLYWOOD HUSKIES 1981.

  So why no picture with the team’s defense? Because they took photos of the starting offense and in an attempt to be fair, wouldn’t allow anybody to have two photos. But for time immemorial, when your grandkids’ grandkids’ great-grandkids are going to the Library of Congress to look at the North Hollywood High yearbook, they’ll see Alex Richardson squatting at my position. Is that your definition of fair?

  The most memorable game of my senior season was the last one. We stunk. I think we were 1–7 going into the game. We were playing the Monroe Vikings. (They were the actual team that played Spicoli’s team in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.) They had an all-city running back, and if we could stop him we might have a chance. I convinced the coach to rejigger the defensive scheme to stop the run, and by the middle of the week I was cautiously optimistic about our ability to shut him down. Unfortunately, since it was the end of the season, we had injuries to many of our skill position players and no way to score ourselves. That’s when I heard the news. Robert and Lenny had died.

  Robert and Lenny were two of the most beloved players from the previous year’s team. All of the seniors like myself had played with these guys as juniors the previous year and still hung out with them, since they went to college locally. Robert and Lenny were carpooling in a Pinto station wagon on their way to Cal State Northridge when the accident happened. Their car was pinned between two other cars, leaving them no way to escape when the Pinto burst into flames. Robert and Lenny never got out. The team was devastated, although it was too much for me to comprehend. Wendell Shirley, the slowest 145-pound black man in the league and perhaps the world, announced he was going to take one to the house for Robert and Lenny. At the time I thought, That’s a great gesture, but highly unlikely considering your history of having no history with scoring. Robert’s funeral was scheduled for Friday morning, the day of the game. Lenny’s was planned for Saturday. Everyone on the team wore a black armband made of electrician’s tape, and of course in the locker room we dedicated the game to Robert and Lenny’s memory.

  1980—North Hollywood High football field. The fact that Robert and Lenny were randomly in this picture together mere months before the accident still haunts me.

  My new defensive scheme worked to perfection. We held them to only one touchdown and took out their all-star running back. But with only minutes left in the game they remained ahead, 7–0. As I mentioned earlier, our offense was decimated and we couldn’t move the ball. And that’s when it happened. They punted to Wendell Shirley. Wendell fielded the punt and took it 70 yards to the end zone, just as he had promised. Our sideline went crazy. I snapped the ball for the extra point and just like that, with almost no time left on the clock, the game was tied. Our celebration lasted until the ensuing kickoff, when the Vikings ran a reverse and their kick returner took it 80 yards for a touchdown himself. Obviously he wasn’t a fan of Robert or Lenny. The gun sounded, and even though I didn’t know it at the time, that was the last football game I would ever play in.

  Okay, that was maybe a little bit of a bummer, so here’s one last quick story about my high school football career. I was getting my required physical before I could join the team. I was fifteen. I was in the doctor’s office and he said, “Get into your underpants, I’ll be back in two days.” I love how they tell you to get into your underwear and then make you sit there for forty minutes in your tighty-whiteys. At fifteen I could get into my underpants in 7.3 seconds. They should tell you to kick off your shoes and hang out. Their time is important, but I think they can spare the three blinks it would take for me to get into my skivvies.

  The worst part is that in those pantsless forty-five minutes, three people will come into that room. A nurse comes in, then the receptionist, then a guy filling the vending machine. Anyway, I was standing there in my underpants for ten minutes, then fifteen minutes, then a half hour with no problem. Then all of a sudden I think, Oh, Jesus, here it comes. In high school before you’re finished s
aying the word boner you can get a boner. For no reason. At that age you can’t even think about it. Once you’ve thought about it, it’s on. So there I was with a boner knowing that the doctor or some other random person could come into the room at any second. Killing a fifteen-year-old boner takes a wooden stake and a silver bullet. Wishing it away only makes it stronger. And then I came up with an idea that would not only kill my boner but make me look that much better in my underpants if the nurse came in. I got down and started doing push-ups. When is the last time you had a boner while doing push-ups? The blood in your triceps calls down to the blood in your cock, “Hey, quit playing grab-ass and get up here, we’ve got a Code Five.” When the doctor came in, he saw me all sweaty and must have thought I was trying to fuck the linoleum.

  Like Jim Thorpe, Bo Jackson, and Deion Sanders, I was also a multisport athlete. I played baseball, right field. On one particularly hot, dry day, my nose began to bleed. It’s only happened to me twice in my life. Something about the heat and the dryness. The blood was pouring out of my nose and onto my white Huskies uniform. I didn’t know what to do, I wasn’t sure how to call a time-out from right field, and it didn’t seem severe enough to stop the game. So in between pitches I got hold of a 3 Musketeers wrapper that was blowing by, pulled off a piece, balled it up, and shoved it up my right nostril. It didn’t stop the bleeding but it did slow it down, sort of like when you do that cup thing with your hand to give your dog water at the park. Nobody knew what was going on out there except for me, so it was a surprise to everybody at the end of the inning when I got back to the dugout and there was blood all over my jersey. The coach said, “You should go to the locker room and take care of that,” but I was up first that inning and there was no way I was going to miss an at-bat. I stood in the batter’s box watching the red blood drip onto the white home plate and quickly got two strikes on me. I remember thinking, “Great, now I’m going to strike out and then go to the locker room. I should have just listened to the coach and gone in to see the trainer.” The third pitch, however, I drove into the power alley in left field. My high school didn’t have a left-field fence so even though the ball flew past the outfielders and kept rolling down the football field I still had to hustle around the bases. I arrived at home plate to a hero’s welcome. Not only did I hit a home run, but I did it with blood pouring from my nose. That somehow made it better. As soon as the celebration was over at home plate, I started to make my way to the locker room when I saw the pitcher throw the ball to the third baseman and the umpire yell, “You’re out.” It’s something you rarely see in baseball, but every now and again somebody will claim that you missed the base, throw the ball back to that base, and if the umpire calls you out, you’re out. No home run. And it goes in the books as a double because it’s the same as you hitting a double and trying to stretch it into a triple and getting thrown out. They almost never call this, and why they decided to do it now with my bloody nose and my home run is beyond me. I’m sure I pushed off the edge of the base like I was taught, but even if I didn’t, they still would never call this. My bloody-nose home-run had been downgraded to a bloody-nose double.

  The following game we were playing Fairfax High and I hit the ball into exactly the same power alley in left field that I hit with the bloody nose. I was running toward first when my buddy George Espinoza, who was coaching first base, started laughing and said, “Don’t miss the bag.” I stepped directly into the middle of first base and ended up with a triple. As I was standing on third, I witnessed something I thought I’d never see again. But this time with a twist. They threw the ball to first, and the umpire punched me out. That goes in the books as an out. The home run I could tolerate, because at least that helped my average with a double. My triple just got converted to an out. To this day I still have no idea how something that almost never gets called got called on me in two consecutive games.

  As I said, high school was just some place I had to be for a couple of hours before I was able to fuck around with my friends. And typically those good-time buddies were Ray and Chris. Ray has his own chapter later in this book because I have so many stories of petty crime, practical jokes, and painful moments with him to share. But for the time being I’d like to focus on Chris and some more of our early misadventures.

  As you can tell by the pie-eating-contest story from earlier, when you grow up like I did, the allure of free food is powerful. When I was fifteen, Chris was working at the mall in Sherman Oaks at a place called Snacks 5th Avenue. That’s not a typo, it’s a bad pun. It was one of those food kiosks that sold oversized chocolate chip cookies, candy, and giant soft pretzels.

  Does anything go from great to terrible when miniaturized more than the pretzel? The gap between the giant, warm, mustard-covered soft pretzel you get at the ballpark and the stale, salty mini-pretzel you get on a plane is a chasm that Evel Knievel couldn’t jump in his Skycycle. Most stuff takes a dip when it gets smaller, especially tits. But nothing takes as steep a decline as the pretzel. Except perhaps regular corn on the cob versus that awful miniature corn that shows up in stir-fry. That shit’s been on ten million plates but in zero stomachs. Note: Here’s how you know a food is bad—if no one has ever purchased it in a store. Think I’m exaggerating? When’s the last time you returned from the market with a bushel of miniature corn? I’ve tried many times to have this blight removed from store shelves and Chinese restaurants, but the midget-scarecrow lobby is too powerful.

  Despite Mr. Jeffries’s assholery I got my learner’s permit, was able to borrow my dad’s car—a 1976 VW Rabbit—and drive over to pick Chris up after work. He greeted me holding two extra-large root beers courtesy of Snacks 5th Ave. A block from the mall, Chris started pissing on me. He just whipped it out and started peeing on me while I was driving on a busy Los Angeles street. We could have easily died. It’s a miracle I didn’t go up on the curb and hit some pedestrians and then a phone pole. But I stayed on the road. I couldn’t think to do anything else but take my jumbo root beer and douse him with it. Of course he retaliated in kind, taking his root beer and dumping it on me. So the inside of my dad’s car had two full thirty-two-ounce root beers—one of the stickiest substances known to man—and a bladder’s worth of Chris’s piss in it. The inside of the car smelled like it was pulled from either the worst or the best river in the world. But for once my dad’s cheapness paid off. He had gone with the full vinyl interior and opted for the rubber floor mats—because, you know, carpet might have cost an extra twelve dollars. There wasn’t a stitch of fabric in the car, so we were able to hose it out like an ice chest. The only difference between that car and a monkey cage was a drain on the floor.

  Chris and I did some stupid shit in that car. The very first thing I did when I got my driver’s license was pick Chris up in the Rabbit and say, “Come on, buddy. We’re gonna catch some air.” We went to Chandler Boulevard because it’s split in two by train tracks sitting on a six-foot mound. I said to him, and I remember this specifically, “Hang on, Starsky.” I was hell-bent to get all four wheels off the ground or I wouldn’t be able to show my face in the tenth grade again. The next thing you know, we were airborne. Unfortunately, what I couldn’t see until we had all four wheels off the ground was the pickup truck attempting to turn left onto Chandler in front of us. I slammed on the brakes, although when the tires aren’t making contact with the earth’s surface your braking capability is vastly decreased. We landed, swerved, and narrowly averted catastrophe. The next outing we decided to go on foot, this time to our friend Este’s house.

  Chris and I had known Este Cholodenko since the seventh grade. In that silly junior-high style of dating, she declared that she liked both me and Chris and was going to think about it and decide which one of us would get to be her boyfriend. Chris and I waited anxiously together by his phone for the moment when Este made her decision. It was like when they announce a new pope: We were eagerly awaiting a smoke signal to let us know who would be her man. Este called and gave me the news.
She said, and this is a quote, “I’m going with you … all my friends think I’m crazy.” It was my first in a lifelong series of what the great Albert Brooks coined as the “complisult,” something that starts as a compliment but quickly becomes an insult.

  Este was my girlfriend for the majority of seventh grade. At the time she was kinda awkward and dorky. And then, as my luck would have it, she got superhot and dumped my ass but wanted to remain friends, I guess just to torture me. We did stay friends, and a couple of years later in high school she made the mistake of letting me and Chris loose in her kitchen. As you know, the Carollas had only the basic elements of food—tarragon, flour, bouillon cubes, but no lasagna or leftover Chinese—so I would ravage my friends’ kitchens when given the opportunity. Este left to run some errands, so we just scurried around eating, jumping into her swimming pool, and rifling through her drawers looking for panties. At a certain point in our scavenging we found a pot of wax, the kind used to remove eyebrows. Chris and I decided that since we had that teenage unibrow thing going (thank God I lost that), we were going to heat up the wax and get rid of the hair at the bridge of our noses. The wax was as solid as a rock. So we put a flame underneath to melt it down and walked away. At a certain point during our dip I said to Chris, “We ought to go check on that.” Chris casually brushed it off. I got out of the pool, and when I turned the corner to the kitchen I was greeted by a ball of fire on top of the stove. While we were out at the pool, the wax started smoking and ignited. When that kind of wax burns, it chars and starts sending pieces floating into the air, which then settled all over the kitchen. I used a dish towel to put out the fire and breathed a sigh of relief. I had narrowly avoided disaster. Este’s father was a big Israeli guy and a “contractor.” I didn’t know what he did for a living, but he had a very scary commando Israeli Mafioso look. He was not your Northeastern Domesticated Jew. He was short with thick, hairy forearms. He was like a cross between an Israeli and a pit bull. I called Chris in so we could have a laugh about our close call when we noticed black soot settling on the counter, the curtains, and the hood vent. As fast as we could wipe it off, a new layer would settle in its place. The pube wax had become weaponized and was leaving a black coat of film throughout the kitchen.