Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Trbobitch: The Younger Years

You'd never know it now, because I am sexy and awesome and totally badass, but I was a very awkward child. Not only was I painfully shy, I was also quite chubby. My loserishness was further augmented by the fact that I wore "stretchy" jeans and cut my own bangs (the fact that I even had bangs still makes me cringe). To what little friends I did have, I was a bossy, know-it-all, little bitchface. My middle school memories consist of being referred to, on a daily basis, as Amanda "Piggins" and coming to school worried about which "friends" were "mad at me" this week. I was so pathetic, I even failed at being a band nerd. I "played" the saxophone. The problem was, I never actually learned how to play it and just pretended to play in band practice. Spot check day consisted of a note on the band director's desk that I was quitting band.

There are many stories from this time of my life that would probably have us all enjoying a good laugh at my childhood self, but there is only so much making fun of myself that I can take for one day. So let's fast forward to the magical summer before high school when I dropped 15 lbs and grew breasts, shall we? I went to high school believing that I was still as dorky and funky as I was in middle school, so imagine my surprise to have Seniors hitting on me! I had a hard time discerning that the GI Jane cat-calls (brought on because I thought it was infinitely cool to wear my brother's army shirt as a jacket) were actually feeble teenage boy attempts at getting my attention versus actually making fun of me. Because no one had ever snapped my training bra or pulled on my pig-tails, I had no idea that this was actually a young human male mating ritual. By this time, however, I had learned to not get upset over being made fun of, or I would have probably made a total ass of myself. (To this day, I still have a crippling awkwardness about getting hit on. I usually either say something stupid or act like a total bitch.)

This new found non-dorkiness eventually caught on in my self-esteemless psyche and I started to make real friends and do real teenage things. Like smoke, drink and get high. I was cool. One of my fondest (well, not necessarily fondest, more like nostalgic in the same way the old guy down the street who smelled like bacon and old feet who tried to lure you in his house with butterscotch candies was) memories from my Stoner Phase was sitting at my friend's house, smoking $5 worth of pot (which usually was the last $5 either of us had), watching The Wall and trying to figure out, in all of our stoned philosophical genius, what Roger Waters was actually trying to portray in this film (incidentally, we always had an Earth-shattering epiphany whereby we discovered not only the meaning behind Rogers Waters' creative genius, but also the secrets of the Universe).

We'd then decide we were absolutely starving and, since we spent all of our money on the cause of said starvation, we would raid any and all sources of loose change until we found enough silver (colored, not actual silver) coins to order our usual from Pizza Outlet. The "usual" consisted of one Italian hoagie, no onions and an order of breadsticks with ranch dressing. Each time, we paid the poor man who came to feed us in a varied assortment of nickels, dimes, quarters (and, eventually, pennies, which is probably when they stopped answering the phone when we tried to order) and the never-ending source of laughing hysterics that was his "tip". Yes, every day, this poor sucker's tip was a hand written note with some tragically juvenile "tip", like PB4UGO2BED (bwahahahahahaha!!). We'd pig out, then we'd both end up falling asleep (unfortunately, due to short-term memory loss, we completely forgot the previously mentioned revelations of the Universe when we woke up).

Is anyone now surprised that I turned out the way I did?

3 comments:

  1. This was a rather entertaining read. :)

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  2. Somehow I forgot to include that I wore gigantic red glasses. This may sound chic and trendy, I assure you it was not. Gonna have to dig out a pic.

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