Free Bad Habits by Jenny McCarthy Page A

us not to do the same thing.
    My dad grew up in a small house with twelve brothers and sisters. He slept in a closet because his house had only two bedrooms. When Vietnam came calling for him at the age of eighteen, it was like an upgrade. He would have his own bed for once.
    Unfortunately, and as expected, the stories of him walking the front line in Vietnam were nothing short of horrific. It took years to get some of these stories out of him, but eventually the vault began cracking and stories started spilling.
    There were so many people dying around him, he expected not to survive. Just on the off chance he did, he sent his military checks home to Chicago so his mom could put them in his bank account and he could build a life for himself once he was out of the war.
    After two long years of serving on the front line, Dad got to come home. He was never injured during the war, but on the plane ride home he was bitten by a mosquito and caught malaria. As if the emotional scars from Vietnam weren’t painful enough.
    Once back in Chicago, he was determined to start a life for himself. With the money he saved over two years, he was going to put a down payment on a home and hopefully meet the right gal and start a family. This was his lifelong dream.
    Sadly, what took place next was the finishing touch to destroying my dad’s dream of creating a good life. His brother forged his name and spent all of his Vietnam money. It was gone.
    Needless to say, my pop was devastated. This wasn’t the type of devastation that caused him to get mad, punch his brother in the face, and move on. This was the type of devastation that dug deep into the core of his soul and remains to this day.
    My perception was that my father dealt with this by coming to terms with the fact that money is always supposed to be a struggle to get. To him, it always seemed that as soon as he got some money, it immediately went away. He didn’t know what else to do to earn a good living, so he decided to go to beauty school because that’s where the hot chicks were and where he could have as much sex as possible. Smart guy. He obviously had a great time because he married the hottest beautician in the joint—my mom.
    My mother came from a poor household too, so they both had a lot of experience with putting food on the table with no money in the bank. My dad took a job at a steel plant and my mom got her license as a beautician. She worked from home and did the majority of hairstyling for our neighbors. Her strategy was awesome when we were desperate to get dinner.
    Mom would wait for a neighbor to walk by our house and say, “Hey, Mike, your hair is looking a little long. You want me to trim it?”
    Everyone would say, “Yeah, it is pretty long. Okay.”
    And then she would collect five bucks from them.
    That night, boom bam, we were eating noodles with ground chuck for dinner.
    When people say to me, “Jenny, you really are a scrapper in Hollywood,” I know that this is why. I learned it from the best.
    I’ll always find one way or another to feed Evan.
    No one really had money in our neighborhood, but there was always one family that seemed to have the best toys, clothes, and lawn décor: the Baruchs.
    Those damn Baruchs would rub it in our faces too. My Big Wheel had a crack in the seat, so when I rode it, you could hear me coming from a mile away because my ass was scraping the concrete. I really wanted the new Big Wheel that had pink pompoms.
    Soon after mine broke, Diana came whizzing past the front of my house with the fucking Big Wheel with pink pompoms.
    “Hi, Jenny. Do you like my Big Wheel? You will never ride it. Ever!”
    Whenever I would say to my mom, “Why do the Baruchs get everything? It’s not fair!” my mom would reply, “Jenny, don’t be jealous and envy what other people have. It’s a sin.”
    The next day I would catch my mom out on the porch squinting her eyes to watch Mr. and Mrs. Baruch put up the most amazing Christmas