"Your father blew pot smoke in your face when you were 4, encouraged a girl he was dating..."

"... to take your virginity when you were 11 and was present when you first did coke at 13. He once said, 'Obviously most people are going to think I’m a sicko nutcase.'"

Anthony Kiedis, now 49 years old, responds:

It was a different era. My father rebelled ferociously against his conservative upbringing where his father physically abused him. When the ’60s came, my dad swung that pendulum so far, but it was not tempered with any kind of sense that maybe a child has to be a child. Still, we were probably closer than any of my friends and their fathers, who would come home, get drunk on martinis, read the newspaper and never engage their children. As a father now, I wouldn’t do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn’t do the things he did out of selfishness or malice....

For all of the things that seem difficult to accept, he also would sit me down at age 12 and say, “Here’s 10 great words that I think you should know,” or “Here’s Ernest Hemingway,” or “Here’s pop art.” His idea was: If it’s good for me, it’s good for my son.

ADDED: What great 10 words that a 12-year-old doesn't know yet would you bestow upon your 12-year-old?