My dad took me and Roger for ice cream before dropping Roger off. We didn’t say much on the ride home. I wasn’t exactly sure what had gone on, but I knew that my dad was angry at Steve, and I figured maybe I could make him feel better somehow.
“I don’t like Steve either, Dad. He’s fat, and so is Kevin, and they think they’re good at stuff, but they’re only good ’cause they’re fat and bigger than everyone else,” I huffed.
My dad was silent as he parked the car in our driveway. Then he turned to me. “Son, I didn’t understand one goddamned thing you just said. Take your cleats off before you get inside the house, I think you stepped in dog shit.”
On My Eighth-Grade Graduation Ceremony
“They’re celebrating you graduating from eighth grade? We just went to your sixth-grade graduation two goddamned years ago! Jesus Christ, why don’t they just throw a fucking party every time you properly wipe your ass?”
On Puberty
“How’s puberty treating you? . . . How do I know you’re going through it? Oh I don’t know, maybe it’s the three hundred dick hairs you suddenly leave all over the toilet seat that clued me in.”
On Asking to Have the Candy Passed to Me During
“What do you want — the candy? They’re throwing people in the fucking gas chamber, and you want a Skittles?”
On Accidentally Eating Dog Treats
“Snausages? I’ve been eating dog treats? Why the fuck would you put them on the counter where the rest of the food is? Fuck it, they’re delicious. I will not be shamed by this.”
On Trying Out for the High School Freshman Football Team
“I ain’t letting you try out, you’re too skinny. . . . No, I hate to break it to you, but you can’t do whatever you want, and you most certainly are not a man.”
On Bob Saget’s Demeanor While Hosting
“Remember that face. That’s the face of a man who hates himself.”
On Being Intimidated
“Nobody is that important. They eat, shit, and screw, just like you. Well, maybe not just like you. You got those stomach problems.”
On the Medicinal Effects of Bacon
“You worry too much. Eat some bacon. . . . What? No, I got no idea if it’ll make you feel better, I just made too much bacon.”
“Oh spare me, being stuck in your bedroom is not like prison. You don’t have to worry about being gang-raped in your bedroom.”
My dad has always valued education and hard work. “If you work hard and study hard, and you fuck up, that’s okay. If you fuck up and you fuck up, then you’re a fuckup,” he’s said to me on more than one occasion. But there are a lot of other factors besides effort that go into a successful and enjoyable school experience. Probably the most important one is how you fit in socially.
When I entered junior high, I was five feet tall, weighed eighty pounds, wore gigantic glasses, and—according to my grandpa—sounded like a tiny woman. I sort of knew where I stood, physically, when on a trip to Sea World, a caricature artist drew a picture of me and it didn’t look all that exaggerated. I was basically a character a lazy screenwriter might come up with while half-assing a script: stereotypical nerd. My mom thought “awkward” just meant I was creative. So when I was heading into seventh grade, she talked my dad into sending me to a performing arts school where all the kids were just as awkward. But after seventh grade, my parents decided that the school was a waste.
“I didn’t see them make you
By the start of eighth grade I still hadn’t hit my growth spurt, and I looked the same as I had a year prior. In fact, I think my voice might actually have been higher. I had a good idea how eighth grade was going to go about five minutes into my first day.
“Justin Halpern,” I announced when my homeroom teacher asked for my name.
A big kid with a mustache named Andre leaned over to me. “Eh, puto,” he whispered.
“Yeah?” I said, nervous.
“Why you sound like a fucking bitch?”
Fast-forward a year later to when I entered high school. I had grown several inches, I felt more confident, and I was being called “fag” around 85 percent less. I had a few friends, and everybody who had picked on me in eighth grade basically left me alone now.
