If you don’t know who Danielle Bregoli is, she is now a rapper named “Bhad Babie.” Obviously, she spells the word “bad” (and baby) wrong, but I think that’s the point. She doesn’t give a fuck. Anyway, before she became a rapper, she was the girl on the Dr. Phil show telling the entire audience to “catch her outside” after calling them a bunch of whores. The internet caught wind of this episode and turned it into a meme that now lives in infamy. “Cash me outside, howbow dah?” People use this meme as a way to mock Danielle, who was all but thirteen years old at the time, but they must not have watched the full segment as I did. If they had, they would have probably seen what I saw. I saw thirteen-year-old Bhad Babie put a boot-up Dr. Phil’s ass, and his audience’s, on his own show. It was like watching some unranked college football team roll into Bryant-Denny Stadium, shutting out Alabama, then telling any of the 100,000 ‘Bama fans that if they want smoke to see them in the parking lot. At one point in the episode, Dr. Phil asks Bregoli why she steals cars. It was hard to understand the fake accent Bregoli was using, but her reply went something like, “Because I do what the fuck I want.” Dr. Phil’s audience made sounds of disapproval. But she’s exactly right.
Bregoli encapsulated many of these teenage girls who wind up on shows like Maury, Dr. Phil, Teen Mom, et cetera, et cetera. South Park parodied girls of this type on an episode where Cartman played an “out-of-control-teen.” Cartman was just trying to win a prize by being the most out-of-control teen, but he had to continuously one-up the legitimate out-of-control-teen on Maury. “WHATEVAH! I DO WHAT I WANT,” was Cartman’s go-to catchphrase. It wasn’t a far-fetched parody by any means. Girls on these shows say shit just like that. Here’s the thing, though: They’re right. They are going to do whatever they want to do, as will we. The difference is that some of us had competent parents that prevented us from doing whatever the hell we wanted. Parents who prevent us from doing whatever we want, whenever we want, are good because what we want typically sucks, especially when we’re kids. More video games, more pizza, more chaos. Less education, less salad, less order. Even with that, though, we are still going to do whatever we want. It’s just that we may not have to do something now in order to gain something better in the future. We all want a better future, so even in not doing something, we are still doing what we want.
This piece I’m writing now was supposed to be out on New Year’s Day. It’s now January 5th. The reason it wasn’t out on New Year’s Day is simple: I didn’t feel like writing it then, so I didn’t. Sure, I wanted it to be out on New Year’s Day, so I could capitalize on everybody’s resolutions but laying in bed watching sports took precedent that day. That’s the whole thing about New Year’s Resolutions. We make grandiose plans for ourselves just because a number in the date changed, and on January 2nd, we manage to fuck it up and quit. Why? There’s no Freudian theory behind it. Simply, we didn’t really want the things we thought we did. You know how the story goes. “This year, I am going to get into the best shape of my life.” That lasts for about a week (or less, more often than not), and next thing you know, we are demolishing a Quesarito. Quesarito’s are fuckin’ bomb. It feels better to eat a Quesarito than it does to grind it out at the gym for an hour. We think to ourselves that we want to be healthier, we think to ourselves that we want a better career, we think to ourselves that we want better relationships, but no amount of thinking about these things ever propels us into action. We didn’t feel like putting in the work required to achieve those goals. I used this piece itself as an analogy, but I’ll give you another one. Most mornings, I would wake up from the night before and think to myself, “I am not going to drink today. I know the consequences of my drinking. I know the damage it does to my body. Done deal. No booze for me today.” And guess what? Around 4 PM (or AM), I’d be lit the fuck up again. I’d wake up in the morning asking myself how the fuck I let it happen. Easy. The feeling of drinking absolutely trumped the feeling of not drinking. And it was so. I am going to do whatever I feel like doing, and I am not going to do what I don’t feel like doing.
I suppose the question becomes, “how do we change the way we feel about something then?” Here’s what I know: Drinking got me into rehab. It felt like shit. I don’t want to drink anymore because going to rehab feels like shit. From there, I thought to myself that going to meetings might keep me sober and out of rehab, which feels like shit. Now, I go to meetings every single day. Because I feel like it – they make me feel good and not like shit. While I was drinking, I looked like shit. I don’t want to look like shit. I hate running for the sake of running, so one day I played basketball. It feels good watching the ball go in the net, so I do that pretty much every day now, too. After doing that for a while, I didn’t look like shit. It feels good not to look like shit, so I continue to play ball. It’s not really rocket science, is it? Someone said to me recently that it feels like motivation “comes and goes.” I think I know why – because action comes first. When we just do *something*, we give ourselves the opportunity to feel good about it. That’s when motivation comes. When we stop doing something, motivation goes. Alcoholics like me are dumb. We start doing various things, and it’s no wonder we are motivated to stay sober. Then, for whatever reason, we stop doing them and wonder why we are back in rehab. Feeling like shit.
Another question that arises from this is the idea of free will and whether we have it or not. As stated, we are going to do whatever we feel like doing – at all times. There’s no stopping that. How many times have we had a problem, asked multiple people what they would do in the same situation, received good advice, and then just did what we originally were going to do anyway? Countless. Sometimes I wish Christians would stop trying to play both sides of the fence. “Yes, God has a plan for us, but we also have free will.” That line exists because to say anything else would leave too much wiggle room for us to blame God for something. Isn’t He everything, or He is nothing? When things go right, it’s God’s plan; when things go wrong, it’s because you exercised your free will. That’s like a coach addressing the media after the game. If the team won, “the players executed my game-plan perfectly.” But, if the team loses, “the players failed to execute the game-plan.” What if your game-plan sucked, coach? What if the players on your team are just better than the players on the other team? If it sounds like I’m bashing Christianity, I’m really not. My point is that I wish they would pick a lane and stay in it. Look, if you want to tell me that it was God’s plan for you to cheat on your wife, go through the pain of losing your family, and growing from that experience, then tell me that. That, I understand. But spare me this “free-will” shit. Either that or tell me that God has left it entirely up to you whether you get into the Kingdom of Heaven or not, and isn’t responsible for you slipping a twenty out of your girlfriend’s wallet. Toxic Boyz 4 Lyfe.
Okay, fine. Bhad Babie wasn’t on Dr. Phil secretly arguing that she acts the way she acts because we don’t have free will. She was on Dr. Phil acting like a total asshole, likely because her mother did not prevent her from doing whatever she wanted early enough. But she and all the other stupid out-of-control-teens are still right, just for the wrong reasons. We are going to do whatever we want. We just need to change the way we feel about what we want, and we can’t do that by thinking about it. I need to do something if I want to do that. Once. And see how it feels. If it feels good, then maybe I’ll do more of it. If you read that and immediately thought that I was talking about jerking off, then we are probably friends or should be friends. Why did I choose to end this piece by talking about jerking off? Because I felt like. If you don’t like it, cash me outside, howbow dah?
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