6.24.07 When I Was a Loser
Who’s teenage years weren’t terrible? Remember the scary older kids? The sadistic gym teacher? The smelly kid who sat next to you in science class? Your first fumbling kiss? That time you threw up in the cafeteria? Your first attempt at putting on a condom? The period that arrived unexpectedly? That awful fight with your parents? The first time you got drunk? That note you wrote that you shouldn’t have written? The day you forgot to zip your fly? That monster zit? When, you wondered, would it all end? In When I Was a Loser, John McNally, author of the novel America’s Report Card, assembles twenty-five original essays—often hilarious, sometimes tenderhearted, always evocative—about defining moments of high school loserdom. You think you had it bad in high school? These authors had it so much worse!
On 6.24.07, we’ll chat with Julianna Baggott, Owen King, Timothy Schaffert, Kelly Braffet, and John McNally about their stories of angst, humiliation, heartache, and other staples of teen life.
Have you got your own hilarious or horrifying high school story? The publisher was kind enough to pony up five free books for our readers. Leave your comments here and my top five picks will receive a copy of the book. Read more about their guests and their stories after the jump.
John McNally writes about the elusive nature of being cool in high school and how things started to disintegrate between him and my girlfriend shortly after she discovered an eraser-tip-sized bald spot on the crown of his head — the beginning of the end, for both his high school romance and his hair.
About the Author: John McNally is author of two novels, AMERICA’S REPORT CARD and THE BOOK OF RALPH, and one story collection, TROUBLEMAKERS. He’s also edited five anthologies. A native of Chicago’s southwest side, he lives in Winston-Salem, NC
and teaches at Wake Forest University.
Owen King’s essay, “Sports,” is a reassessment of his high school sports career, which at the time seemed a matter of global importance. It’s also about the strange criteria we used to rate ourselves and our peers as teenagers, and the way those judgments
evolve.
About the Author: Owen King grew up in Maine. He is a graduate of Vassar College and holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Bellingham Review, One Story, and Paste Magazine, among other publications. He lives in New York with his wife, the novelist Kelly Braffet.
Timothy Schaffert’s essay is about his vanity vs. his physical awkwardness and ailments… starts with his grandmother giving him a perm for his senior pictures, and ends with a near-collision on prom night.
About the Author: Timothy Schaffert is the author of three novels, most recently Devils in the Sugar Shop, a Book Sense pick for May. His second novel, The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and his first, The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters will be reissued by Unbridled Books in the fall. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where he is the director of the (downtown) omaha lit fest.
Kelly Braffet’s essay, “Fuck High School,” captures the dynamic and dissolution of her most significant group of friends in high school, but more than that, it’s about her own reconciliation with both her high school self and all the weird, brilliant freaks she called her friends.
About the Author: Kelly Braffet is the author of the novels Last Seen Leaving and Josie and Jack. She holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University. She currently lives in Brooklyn with two and a half black cats, a great deal of clutter, and her husband, the novelist Owen King.
Julianna Baggott’s grandmother’s five poodles, her grandfather’s leglessness, her mother’s fear of poisoning the family at dinner, and her sister’s humiliating sense of humor –Julianna always pegged these things as typical family stuff. Until McNally came along with the anthology idea, she had no notion that these things could entertain others? She’s glad that her teenage suffering can be of some use.
About the Author: Julianna Baggott is the author of four novels, including THE MADAM, based on the life of her grandmother who was raised in a house of prostitution and who appears briefly in Baggott’s essay in TEEN: WHEN I WAS A LOSER, as well three books of poems, including LIZZIE BORDEN IN LOVE. She also writes children’s novels, namely THE ANYBODIES trilogy, under the pen name N.E. Bode. She is a regular contributor to XM Radio’s XM Kids. For more info visit: www.juliannabaggott.com or www.theanybodies.com.
French class was horrifying! Worst was that the unimaginably round, old and vulgar French teacher also taught my father when he went to school. She would wear tight short polyester dresses, and sit most boys at the front of the class, where she would continually drop papers and chalk on the floor so she could oh so slowly pick them up for her dramatic pause when teaching. Thank you God I am a girl at the back of the class. Thank you God she hated my father when he was in her class so she never kept me late after class for whatever chores my classmates had to endure. Ha, that was fun to remember her, je pense que je monterai jet maintenant.
let me see, of the humiliating moments, there are so many to choose from… it’s really hard to say… i had a charming, 6′ 4″, green-eyed older brother who somehow managed to run the school… i mean, he did whatever he wanted. went to class, didn’t go to class; all classes were pervious to him. he was friends with everyone from freshman to senior and could be caught at any given moment breaking 10 school codes, not to mention several civil laws, and simulataneously calling professors by nick-names and giving them gregarious and bizarre greetings like “hey what’s up Coco [a male professor].. now you and i know there ain’t nothing wrong with a little bump and grind.” anyway, one day, he comes into my history class and signals the professor in the middle of her lecture on the spanish armada…. she’d used the term, “thrice to the broadside” i remember. and he askes if he could “borrow” me for a minute. that seemed to be common in high school. when a class was broken up to sequester someone off, they were always being “borrowed.” so, i was borrowed and brought into a math class that neither he or i was taking and was actually being held for freshman (i was a sophomore). in this class was a girl who (apparently and not to my knowledge, but to my brother’s) had a big crush on me. and he says, “Hey, Mr. Eustice. I think Sarah has something she wants to say to my brother. Do you mind?” In front of the whole class! Being much more shy than he was, I immediately burst into a violent sweat. “Sarah,” he continued. “Don’t you want to share what you said to me to my brother?” The whole class is in disbelief at this kind of disruption. And poor Sarah, she broke out in hives… and everyone was somewhat humiliated and mortified. Mr. Eustice, old, cheerful, with the countenance of a mole… just waited. (without saying “i’ll wait”) He looked at sarah with the chalk in his hand. and eventually said, “well, do you?”
my brother was sorta holding me there by the sleeve of my shirt and i was able to pull free at that point… and try to pretend like none of that was happening. anyway, i ended up dating sarah for 3 years… and then she broke my heart and i’ve never loved again… but i’ve tried! on our first three dates, she broke out in hives again! i want to be dead. thanks for making me remember that…. peace! i love julianna baggott! long live jb!
My most humilitating moment! The extremly short version. Picture it-high school during the middle of class change. While walking down the hall with my friend to go to the next class. My ex-boyfriend, runs by me and pulls my jogging pants down. I am standing in the middle of the hallway with everyone laughing, teachers standing outside their classrooms to welcome students in for class staring. I just stood there for a few seconds because I couldn’t believe what he just did to me in front of everybody. I quickly pulled up my pants and hurried on to my next class. During class people came in laughing, saying I saw your underwear they look nice and clean. All I could say was shut up-that’s not funny.
Anyway one of the teachers who was in the hallway escorted him to the office and he got in-school suspension for a couple days.
We were the first family in the neighborhood to have a VCR. It was so old, that in order to rewind a tape, you had to flip it over and fast-forward.
My parents were also the first in the neighborhood to have a good porn VHS tape. I don’t remember the name of it, but it took place in the office of a magazine whose sales were going in the tolet, so what they did was…
Anyway, that movie gave me a boner for writing and editing. I straddled two high-school cliques–cig-smoking jerks (although I didn’t smoke) and nice niave boys. I was home one Saturday night, playing Monopoly with the latter, and the formers came ringing the doorbell. They wanted to come in and watch my parents’ porn, and all jerk off in front of each other. But I never jerked off in front of them, and I also didn’t want to do it in front of my wuss friend Marvin Gardens. I told my dirtbag friends to leave. Thinking back, this must have been after they convinced me to shoplift an XL shirt for one of them.
Anyway again, I finally had the balls to tell them to go away, and I went back to Baltic. When my parents came home an hour later, they said, “what’s this?” holding a note that was taped to the front door: “Dear Mom and Dad, Please don’t come in. I am jerking off to your porn tape. Love, Dave”
I never saw that tape hidden in those papers behind that box under the couch again. And as far as those nasty boys? At my 20th HS reunion, I knew that one of them was now living in Florida, and I found out that one of them had been diagnosed with MS, so he wasn’t there. And I was so looking forward to punching him in the nose!
One Friday night, my best friend Dina and I were hanging out at her apartment for the millioneth time , dreaming of boys who weren’t calling us, dying my hair burgundy and listening the the Smiths. And then, the phone rang. We screamed. Dina answered the phone and grew progressively more excited by whatever was being said by the caller. She got off the phone,”That was Nels. He invited us down to San Clemente Beach for a barbecue with a bunch of other people.” Nels, a senior, had never invited us anywhere before. Dina worked with him on the newspaper staff. I had a gut-twisting crush on Nels and this piece of news almost spun me out of orbit. Dina continued, “He says a bunch of them, Eddie, Bill, Mike are all driving down right now and that we should meet them in a couple of hours. He gave me directions” Within twenty minutes we were flying down the 5 freeway towards San Clemente, a beach town about an hour and a half from where we lived, in Dina’s yellow VW hatchback. I lay my head against the window and stared up at the full yellow moon. I swooned with romantic visions of Nels and I making out on the moonlit beach while the others drank Strawberry Hill around the fire. When we arrived in the vicinity of San Clemente, Dina began looking for the freeway exit. Nels had given her a vague description of firepits and cliffs. After getting on and off the freeway a couple of times in a fruitless effort to find the exit, we had no luck. We decided to try our luck with a random stree that seemed like it could be the right one and drove around the area with no luck of finding anything that fit Nels’ description. I began to fear that we weren’t going to find the party. By this time it was about nine pm. Dina decided to stop by a gas station to ask where San Clemente State Beach was, the one with the firepits and the cliffs. The gas station attendant had no idea what beach we were talking about. “There is no San Clemente State Beach,” he said. After driving around for another hour without seeing anything that remotely fit the Nels’ description, we packed it in and drove home, bedraggled and disappointed. The next day, Dina and I went over to Nels house to find out what had happened. His older brother, Jim, already in college and home for the weekend, looked embarassed when he answered the door. “You guys didn’t drive to San Clemente last night, did you?”he asked. “Yes,we couldn’t find the place,” Dina answered. “Umm, well, Nels and Eddie and Bill were playing a joke on you.” “What?” we said.”They never went to the beach. They were here the whole time, just laughing at you when you got all excited about meeting them. You guys actually believed them?”Dina and I just stood in shock. My head felt like it was in a wind tunnel. We had believed them. And we had been really excited. And they had been fucking with us, the fat weird girls, the entire time. Aaah, high school, the glory days.
I really don’t have just one true humiliating high school story because frankly, throughout high school, I just generally felt lame. Hindsight being 20/20, I know in my heart that I was fine and I wish I had just relaxed and tried to enjoy my limited youth. Coming from one of the poorer families in our area, and having moved there from a small town Catholic school 6 months prior to Freshman year in public school, I constantly worried about my not-so-cool clothes, my weird hair, my 5′10″ height, my shyness, and my inability to fit in with a group. It was part Wonder Years, part Square Pegs. I was THE Sarah Jessica Parker character at school, complete with big glasses, freakish hair, Kahlo-esque eyebrows, and ill-fitting clothing.
Now, 15 years later, I think I created the feelings myself. I never fit in with either the super nerds, nor did I fit in with the popular kids. I fell somewhere in the middle, keeping my nose buried in a book, and striving to go unnoticed. And, I did a good job of it too! When I went to my 10 year reunion, I really put effort into my look. I had the perfect dress, heels, hair, body. And here’s what I found…nobody had a clue who I was. They all thought I was attending another event in the hotel and had gotten shuffled into the wrong room! The only real recognition I got was, “weren’t you the really tall girl who sat in the back of the math class?”
I was a complete and utter loser in high school. I was the kid who hoarded books in her locker and ate lunch surrounded by books and college applications, pining for escape. After leaving Clairol hair color in for too long, my hair turned orange and I had to suffer the humiliation of my economics teacher asking me to please remove my hat, and the huge laughter that ensued when i revealed a shock of orange curls. Dinner at Wendy’s instead of the senior prom, seeing losers who drove IROCs hang out with my mother, the list of shame can seriously go on.
When I was invited to my high school reunion in 2003, I almost spit out my coffee. Did these people really think I’d go back and celebrate our formative years in a fucking waffle house? I’d rather tattoo SAVE BRITNEY on my shaved head.
Thank god for adulthood.
-Felicia
I wasn’t actually a loser in high school. Freak, yes. Loser, no. But I was a total loser in junior high.
Not long after I’d seen my best friend’s stepdad pull her off the bus by her hair (my mother had given us matching perms), she turned on me. When I started my period, she announced it to the whole cafeteria. She smashed a Hostess cupcake in my face. She called me Whoria. And then I had no friends. So rather than eat alone in the cafeteria and call attention to my loser-y friendlessness, I ate lunch alone in a toilet stall. When I was done eating, I’d spend the rest of the lunch hour in front of the mirror, pretending to be busy combing my hair, which was feathered on the sides, meeting in a perfect line in the back. I was a loser, but I had great hair.
After several months of lunching in the bathroom, I finally had a friend again. She had posters of the band Toto on her bedroom walls. She was learning how to be a magician. At thirteen, she was sleeping with the 36-year-old ex-cop proprietor of the local magic shop. His name was Bob. She was also sleeping with the late-night DJ of the local radio station. His name was Rob. When her parents were away on their boat, we’d drink schnapps and dance to Duran Duran. Then we’d go down to the magic shop and Bob would tell me I was a hemorrhoid, a real pain in the ass. And then he’d reach across the counter and squeeze my boob. The magic shop also sold pornographic Rubik’s cubes and breast-shaped mugs and wind-up penises.
Friend number one had a baby at sixteen. Her boyfriend was decapitated in a car wreck. Last I heard, she was working as a cashier at the canned food outlet.
Friend number two got married and moved to Minnesota. She left her husband for a woman she worked with at the phone company.
Ok, you’re going to think this is strange. I grew up in a small town. I’m first generation Vietnamese-American, so my sister and I were the ONLY Asian kids in our school–pretty much in our town. Well, my next door neighbors thought that I was a snob (I was the quiet tortured soul that kept to myself in high school). They started spreading all kinds of rumors about me and my family. My favorite was that they thought my dad knew kung-fu (HA!) and one day they saw him leap from the grown to our roof–in his bare feet! My dad is pretty amazing, but he’s not Jackie Chan. At first I was horrified that this rumor was going around and then I thought, it’s kinda funny. Everytime my husband hears this story he just loses it. He thinks it’s hilarious.
I’m with you, Felicia. Middle and high schools are sad, ritualistic environments (at least in the US public system), and the thought of going to a reunion is amusing at best. I can’t believe I even tried to fit in with those fools - it only added blood to the shark tank and they teased me more - but that’s what life is all about at that age, right? Finding a group to fit into, even if it’s a group of people who rage against conformity. I eventually found a few geek/loser friends that are still my closest today. Instead of a hundred fake friends I ended up with three brothers.
I can empathise with Matt, though - I never knew of any girls having crushes on me, but I do remember my Social Studies (ha!) teacher doing absolutely nothing while some kid swiped a note I tried to pass to a friend and read it aloud in front of the class. It’s as though teachers have resigned themselves to the cruelty of these absurd proving grounds (I suspect some even get a sick enjoyment out of it).
I was definitely a “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Pump Up the Volume” kind of guy.