Private Parts - Hardcover

My Secret of Life

You want the secret of life? Here it is: You wake up in the morning. You eat a little breakfast, maybe read the newspaper. You attempt to go to school if you're that age. If your teacher tells you to sit in the chair, you sit in the chair. If you don't feel like it, you force yourself, anyway. You get older, the routine doesn't change. You eat breakfast, you go to work, you come home. If you're lucky enough, you're married. If you're not, then maybe you have a boyfriend or girlfriend. You yell at your wife, you make up with your wife. If your testicles feel all right, you bang your wife. You watch a video you rented or maybe you go out to the movies.

Then you go home to your bedroom, you mellow out a little bit. If you're the late Sam Kinison you take a schnapps. Then maybe you get a snack, have some strawberries and cream, and wash it down with a Snapple. Then you snore away for eight hours, you wake up, and you do it all over again. You wait for the weekend, that's your party, the weekend. The secret of life is so simple. That's life. If you have kids, you live with the kids. You don't move out on your wife. You stay with her even if you've banged her nine thousand times and you're sick of it. You stay with her anyway. Nobody follows that. They don't realize that's the secret to life. When you've got kids, you raise them.

The secret of life, in one cliche, if I may sum it up for you, is: ENJOY, EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT ENJOYING. Stop looking for a big bang, stop looking for some kind of excitement. And if you can't go along with these rules, you're a misfit. Expect to be beaten by the police. It's like going on a diet. The secret to losing weight is to keep your big fat trap shut.

"But I got to have butter on my potato or I can't eat it." I'll put you in a concentration camp for one week, and you'll eat a potato without butter. It'll taste like ice cream to you.

"The secret to life is so simple," I declared on my show. "The reason I am announcing this secret is that perhaps one of the maniacs who is stealing a radio right now might accidentally tune to me and say, 'Uh oh, I'm about to get the secret of life.' To him it would be profound."

Then Robin complained that my secret to life was too honest. I didn't make it appetizing enough for the listeners.

Okay. Let me make it appetizing. If you follow the secret of life as Howard Stern expresses it, guess what will happen to you? You won't be beaten by the police. You won't be in jail. And you won't have to riot. You'll be perfectly happy.

That still wasn't good enough for Robin.

"You gotta say life will be sweet and all the rewards of the world will be yours," she said. "Lie, Howard."

I thought about it for a second.

"You're right, Robin, I should lie. I should tell all the rioters this secret of life. I hope they're tuned in. Here's the secret of life: Jump into a tub, get yourself wet. Put your finger in an electrical socket. That's the secret of life, you retards."

Copyright © 1993, 1994 One Twelve Inc.