Surprisingly, I was afraid of the one who wasn't a former gang member

Shorty Rossi, the host of Animal Planet’s Pit Boss, is a hero to little people (he runs a talent agency for dwarf actors) and pit bulls (he has a huge rescue charity). He also scares the crap out of me.

Shorty tried to get me over my fear of dogs because I was afraid I would pass that weakness on to my son. Or, more accurately, because I was afraid my son would make fun of me whenever we hear a dog barking behind a fence and I go running and screaming and wildly waving my hands in front of my face.

Hanging out with Shorty and Hercules, his star pit bull, was one of the many hilarious and touching manventures I went on for my first book, Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity, which you can conveniently buy here. You can buy a second copy for your dad at the same place.

I’m less afraid of dogs thanks to Shorty’s immersion program, which included me placing a treat into the mouth of Hercules, a dog that not only once ate through a door, but when that door was replaced by a much thicker door, simply chewed a hole through the dry wall next to the super-thick door and walked through that.

These moms may look perfect, but I bet they've given their kids some pretty insane advice.

When the editors at babble asked us all to share the helpful bits of advice our mothers have given us over the years, I couldn’t help but think of flip side of all that maternal wisdom. Sometimes moms have some real twisted ideas that they impart to us in the form of life lessons. I’m not sure if most moms have a touch of this dark side or if it’s that I mostly hang out with friends who have some… interesting moms.

Strange bits of wacked-out advice can come from even the most warm, affable, and charming moms every once in a while. Here’s some weird shit some moms said. Not surprisingly, almost all of my sources of these “mom quotes” requested anonymity. One of the following koo-koo quotes is from a mom in my family, but I’ll never tell which quote (or which mom.) Can you think of some twisted words of advice from your own mom or another mom you know? If so, leave it in the comments section because I want to hear it!

This poor 4 year old is going to get a lot of shit from the kids at school someday.

There’s a Time magazine cover story out this week that discusses the popularity of the attachment parenting trend and man behind the movement’s bible, The Baby Book, Dr. William Sears. As Time sums up, “The three basic tenets are breast-feeding (sometimes into toddler­hood), co-sleeping (inviting babies into the parental bed or pulling a bassinet alongside it) and ‘baby wearing’ in which infants are literally attached to their mothers via slings.”

When I was pregnant, as far as I knew, this was the only book to read about how to take care of a baby. What the Dr. Spock book was to my parents, the Dr. Sears book is to my generation of moms. It’s the only book my friends with kids told me to get.

Since I wasn’t working, I had the luxury of being able to breastfeed on demand, wear my baby and be exhausted all the time (thanks to responding to every single cry my baby made.) While I was pregnant and reading this book, I wanted to follow Dr. Sears’ every word, so that my son and I would have the tightest possible bond.

It was only once my son was born that I started to realize that some of Dr. Sears’ suggestions not only didn’t work for me, but they didn’t work for my son, either.

This man had me choked out. And I thanked him for it.

Of all the things I don’t want my son to inherit from me, the biggest is my fear of confrontation. So when I found out I was having a boy, I realized I was finally going to have to learn how to fight. My own father – who boxed at college, has scars on his knuckles from boyhood knife fights in the Bronx, and nearly got court-martialed for punching his sergeant – tried to teach me a bunch of times, but I always refused. When he insisted, putting my fists up by my face, I giggled. No one wants to teach a boy to punch while he’s giggling.

So I asked UFC President Dana White if he’d train me so I could try to overcome my fears by getting in the chain-link octagon for one round with fighter Randy Couture. As part of the training, Dana had a Muay Thai black belt kick me in the leg. Then he had a Jiu-Jitsu black belt choke me out. Dana seemed less into teaching me how to fight, then in teaching me how to get beat up. Which was actually way more practical for my fight with Randy Couture.

All of this – and much more – is chronicled in a book about my many man adventures called Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity, which you can conveniently buy here.

After all this, I truly believe I should sign my son up for mixed martial arts classes. Which I’m sure he’ll giggle about when I suggest it. To figure out how to get around that, I asked Dana for some more advice about fatherhood:

Laszlo at the Jackson-free playground

Where I live, there are two playgrounds not too far from each other. I was strolling Laszlo to one of them the other day, when I noticed that a certain kid was there. Let’s call him “Jackson” just because that seems to be every little boy’s name these days. Jackson is an out of control three year old whose parents let him get away with everything. While his parents are nice, they are also super annoying. I wanted to go to the other playground and avoid the whole family.

Jackson’s parents strictly adhere to that parenting technique which involves firmly believing in having no parenting technique. They like to let Jackson “explore.” The word “no” rarely exists in these parents’ vocabulary. And when it does, it is promptly ignored by Jackson and then the parents ignore the fact that he ignored their “no.”

As a result, Jackson is allowed to push, grab toys, and generally not play fair. He’s a brat.

Which is what slipped out of my mouth as I was approaching the playground that Laszlo wanted to go to. “Oh, no. Laz, let’s go to the other playground. That kid Jackson is there and he’s a brat.”

If I had seen this beforehand, I would never have let him hit me in the face.

Dave Salmoni, the host of ABC’s Expedition Impossible and a lot of Animal Planet shows, is all man. When two captive-bred Bengal tigers were returned to Africa, Dave taught them how to be wild again. Then he spent three months without human contact, living with a pride of lions. What I’m saying is that Dave Salmoni is a man who doesn’t care how he smells. Which is even more impressive when you realize how rarely he wears a shirt.

Dave was kind enough to try to teach me how to be a man. Because after I found out we were having a boy, I freaked out over the fact that I am in no way equipped to raise a boy since I don’t know how to camp, fight, drive stick, fix things in my house, throw a football, catch a football, or watch other people throw and catch footballs.

I went on a series of adventures to learn to be a man so I could keep up with my son. I went on a weekend trip with a Boy Scout troop and earned my first badge. I fired a tank after doing three days of Army boot camp. I fought UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture for one round. And I wrote a book about it called Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity, which you can conveniently buy here.

Dave was an excellent teacher of masculinity. He taught me how to drive stick; he forced me to use power tools; he slept in a very small two-man tent with me and farted; he made me stand next to a bear as it walked by; and he punched me as hard as he could in the face. Dave, who had worked as a bouncer, really enjoyed the face punching.

Give me a quick fix to get rid of these pounds!

I’ve spent my entire adult life living in either NYC or Los Angeles. I’m pretty used to being around women doing weird things in the name of vanity and losing weight. So when I heard about the feeding tube diet, I was unfazed. The surprising part to me was the eruption of outrage and disgust that followed the story in the New York Times Style section.

This diet involves spending eight days on a portable feeding tube inserted through the nose. It supplies less than 1000 calories per day of liquid nutrition. It sounds extreme, but when you think about it, women have been doing crazier things to squeeze into a dress. At least this one is supervised by a doctor.

Some people are upset because they feel that this is a serious medical procedure that’s being trivialized. But aren’t tons of medical procedures eventually adapted for cosmetic use? Important medical devices and technologies have been used for frivolous reasons for ages. If there were a limited number of feeding tubes in the world and they were being taken away from people who really needed it, I would be outraged. Otherwise, I say live and let live. They’re not hurting anyone, except maybe themselves.

Some women will try any quick fix for losing weight, in an effort to avoid eating more vegetables and less cake. They’ve been using techniques that are just as outrageous as the feeding tube diet. Here are 10 of them that are pretty crazy, when you think about it. Can you guess which ones I’ve tried?:

Alicia, I've done grosser things. Today.

These are things that grossed me out: Raw chicken, garbage, toilet brushes, feces, blood, touching animals, emptying kitchen sink drains, horror movies. They freaked me out so much that I’d avoid dealing with them at nearly all costs, including having an apartment so disgusting no woman wanted to come over.

These are the things I’m grossed out by after having a baby: Nothing.

It’s not a gradual desensitization. You watch a woman give birth and lose your prissiness pretty fast. A few hours later, I was back at home, watching a woman cook my wife’s placenta and turn it into pills. And I ate mixed nuts while she did it.

Laszlo with a menorah. Because I couldn't find a photo of him bathing in blood or plagued with boils.

I’m a Jew-phile. This is partly because the Jewish holidays are a lot more fun than the holidays I grew up with. In my family, Easter meant long awkward silences over a ham dinner at my Catholic grandmother’s house. Family members would whisper about who was drinking too much. Out of desperation for something to talk about, someone would bring up politics, which always ended in shouting, since my parents are liberal Democrats and my grandparents are far-right Republicans. The holiday always seemed to end with some family member telling someone else to go fuck themselves. The worst part was that I don’t even like ham.

While my family celebrated Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, there was no talk about Jesus being born, let alone rising from the dead. We weren’t Christian and we didn’t go to church. There was an Easter Bunny and eggs and candy and that’s about all I knew about it. I grew up with a total lack of religion.

So I was nervous the first time I went to a passover seder with Joel at his Uncle Ron’s house, 14 years ago. Not only was I meeting many of Joel’s extended family members for the first time, but I didn’t know how to act around a holiday that was overtly religious.

Do NOT show this to anyone, Dad!

I have committed unimaginable crimes against my son. I have published stories in which I call him a pussy and a wimp. I have sat with him for a Today Show segment where I talked about his circumcised penis. I have mocked his nut allergy and his asthma. I have written that he tries to French kiss me, that he asked me to pour water on his penis in the bath and that he likes the feeling of his own feces in his diaper. That last one I revealed just now.

Because I used his real name and because some of this was written for Time magazine, it will likely blot out his own Google imprint. Every date he goes on will metaphorically start with his dad showing a naked photo of him in the bath. A bath where he wants water poured on his penis.

So when Lisa Belkin wrote on the Huffington Post that she thought it was wrong for Dara Lynn-Weiss to reveal how she forced her daughter to lose weight in Vogue, and wrong of Jennifer Coburn to write in Salon how upset she was about her daughter’s first breakup, and wrong of Ayelet Waldman to write in The New York Times about how she was more in love with her husband than her kids, and wrong of Amy Chua to write in the Wall Street Journal about trying to quash her daughter’s independent streak – I felt hurt that she didn’t rail against me.