Recorded Books Inc. - Almost Interesting: Everything You Didnt Want To Know About Me ... And More

S pecial thanks to Gurvie, Lorne, Venit, Sandler, Caitlin, Levine, Warren, and my brothers Andy and Bryan.

Of course, to Harper.

And to my dad, Sammy. If he hadnt scrammed on us when we were kids I wouldnt be fucked up enough to get a book deal. Thanks Scrammy!

I was supposed to die. Thats what seven different doctors in a row told my parents. I came out a month early, a superpreemie (I think that is the street term). I was probably about five pounds and roughly the size of a hacky sack or a medium-size gerbil. To make matters worse, I couldnt eat anything without barfing it all up. I was allergic to everything, so I couldnt put on weight. It was all very scary to the parental units (warning: Coneheads reference). All I could choke down was goats milk, of all things. So gross. The hardest part was taking that goat everywhere. (JOKE NUMBER ONE, FOLKS! Stay close: there are four more buried in this book somewhere.) Thank God Mom and Dad kept hammering away at different doctors because eventually, they found one who said, Ive seen this shit...before. (Very casual doctor.) When he's a... year old he will grow out of it and start eating regular food. The dude was right; when I turned a year old I climbed out from under that goat and said, Fuck this, lets go to Wendys! Obviously I have bulked up to my present athletic appearance since then, but it was touch-and-go there for a while. You can all relax. Spade is ripped and ready for the Combine (NFL reference).

By the way, my parents met when Dad was in the air force as a radar man (the biggest pussy job) and Mom was a sweet, attractive little debutante who went from private schools to Denison University in Ohio. They both attended and I guess the sparks flew. I cant imagine the sparks but they tell me they were there. So in a major playa move my dad, Sammy, put a ring on it and my mom was looking forward to a very quiet, normal life in the Midwest raising a family with her doting husband nearby. (We will find out how this plan went off the tracks later. These hooks keep you reading!)

N eedless to say, growing up I was pretty microscopic, and I hated it. I wasnt just short, I was Oh fuck I hope everythings cool with this kid. Maybe hes actually a hamster short. Im one of three kids. All dudes. Bryan, Andy, and David. B.A.D., as my mom joked. (Shes not a pro comedian so I didnt expect an LOL out of that.) Im the baby. And compared to my brothers I looked like a baby, and I acted like a baby, too. I was such a gigantic pussy/mamas boy growing up it was almost comical. Actually, not almost comical. It is comical. Now. At the time, it was just plain sad. Anyone could beat me up, at any time. I was fragile. And I was always scared.

Ill back up a bit. I was born in Michigan. (Fuck this bookits boring already. Pick up the pace, Spade.) When I was four, my dad had the great idea to move from Michigan (where he was from and where my brothers and I were all born) to Arizona. I think the move was motivated by my dads desire to cheat on my mom in a different state. Apparently he had plowed through Michigan (literally) and was ready to take on the valley of the sun. Sammy wasnt super reliable, so once we got there it became clear that he didnt have the job he said he did, so he grabbed some temp sales job at a magazine that didnt pay shit. He then scrammed on the family and that was that. No calls, no alimony, no child support. Crickets across the board. So my mom, who is truly a saint, had the unfortunate job of raising three selfish rug rats, with little to no income in a town she didnt know with zero friends around. The least Dad could have done was bail out on her in Michigan so she had some peeps around, but he was too selfish to be that thoughtful.

So there we were frying in the desert with no dough, and no plan. Mom had to go out and get two jobs. However, this was the seventies, when guys were assholes and women didnt get paid anything. (Sort of like today! Yay, progress!) So she worked constantly, as a secretary and also doing sales at a department store, while my brothers and I constantly bitched about not having enough of everything. (Why dont I have a surfboard?!) It must have been tough on her. Mom would break down sometimes, but mostly she wouldnt complain and tried to make her ungrateful children happy. My dad would show up once a year and give me a Nerf football for Christmas and act like he was a hero. (Me: Oh my God its two colorsyou spoil us!) The thing was, he was sort of a hero when he came around. When your dad isnt there, you wonder what the fuck you did that was so bad to make him go. Its not like his kids were accidents. Hed planned to have a family. Then he couldnt take the presh and skadoodled, leaving Mom with zero babysitting money and skimpy food rations. But when he came to visit, it was like the pope had come to town or something; we were all over him. Not really fair to Mom, but thats just the way it works when you are a kid.

I never really noticed I was poor. When youre a kid, you just find shit to do around the house or yard to keep yourself busy. If youve never had badass toys, you dont miss them. And people around us were poor, too, so I fit right in. I had no complaints. I used my imagination to entertain myself. I also had a rock collection and a beer can collection I was very proud of. This was my moms idea. I didnt realize till later this was genius on her part. Hey Davey, you should collect rocks and cans! THEYRE FREE! While youre at it, collect old cigarettes butts and broken glass too. Very crafty of her. And Im not bragging, but I had mica, pyrite, and an amethyst in my collection. (Side note to readers: Amethysts, those big purple crystal-looking ones, were a big panty dropper back in the day. Even the big old-school seventies panties, with the louvers.) Dinners at home usually consisted of the five main food groups: tater tots, fish sticks, mac and cheese, Oreos, and cereal. Some combination of these. With a Coke or milk. She did her best; later we moved up to Lean Cuisine. We were ballin.

From day one, I was the school pipsqueak. In class pictures they sat us shortest to tallest and I was always first. It was me then girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, then another guy. To be shorter than every chick was so humiliating, and made me the ultimate bully bait. In third grade a fellow student came up to me during recess and said, Hey Spade, I heard your familys poor. Being in the dark about this fact, I was like, What? Oooohhh no, you got some bad information. A few hotties from my class were drifting by, and they stopped to listen. By the way, being poor isnt the panty dropper you think it is, even in third grade. Chicks were like Let him answer... ! The guy said again, I hear you guys have no money. Now I was getting nervous, but mostly I was thinking, What a dick! Why are you cock-blocking me?! I barely know you! So I tried to defend myself. I said, in a sort of I rest my case tone, Would we have two tires on our lawn if we were poor? He was like, Uhhh, yeah? So I keep going: Would I be wearing the same thing every day if I was poor? Now this one didnt sound good as it came out. And then, it all sort of hit me. We were broke. And that sucked. But my mom was sneaky. Shed say, That outfit looks so good on you, why dont you wear it tomorrow? Classic bamboozle. That day was the end of my poverty innocence. Youd think at some point my dopey brothers might have tipped me off.

In addition to being the shortest and now the poorest, I also had the worst school supplies. My crayons were always that little ghetto four-pack my mom swiped from IHOP and stuffed in her bra (nothing for me today, thanks). These came with the four basic colors: blue, red, green, yellow. One day this foxy chick, who should have been in pre-supermodel school instead of my dogshit class, was sitting next to me said, Hey, can I borrow a crayon? I was like, BOOOIOIOIOIOIOINGGG! Wiener went up so fast it did a gainer. This brat had never talked to me and now we have some chatter going. I couldnt fumble it. This is not a drill! All these thoughts were going through my head. But I played it cool. Why sure... as I looked through my four nubby little crayons, trying to pick one that wasnt broken. Then she coyly upped the ante: Do you happen to have Burnt Sienna? I froze. In my head, I was thinking, WTF? How bout red you little grub worm? But I didnt freak out. I still was playing my Fonzie attitude. Um, let me check... (Mumbling as I sifted through them.) Hmm... yellow... blue... yellow again... I was stalling.