Pathetic Goober Stories

[Ogre]

Inspired by the “Pathetic Geek Stories” comic strip in the Onion A.V. Club, but oh-so-cleverly changing the name (they’ll never know!), I thought it might be fun, in a decidedly masochistic way, to share similar stories from around the SDMB.

I’ll start.

When I was in high school, I used to write for a citywide publication. I provided short fiction, essays, and imginative ramblings and brought a couple of friends in on the deal. Jason (one of my best friends) and I got a reputation for being able to use our imaginations. So the publisher approached us to write this “rap,” to be performed and recorded by someone here dealing with all sorts of things. She wanted popular culture, social issues, political issues, education, etc. She assured us that she wanted our work. Our angst. Our point of view.

We wrote this searing, socially conscious piece that spoofed rap culture and white culture at the same time. We had it worked out so that three people could rhyme certain lines at the same time a la Beastie Boys. We had sections based on the styles of Public Enemy and 3rd Bass and Whodini. It was GREAT. It was also sarcastic and funny. We had the best time writing it. We turned it in with pride.

When the publication came out, we rushed to get it. The publisher had “touched it up” a bit. She decided that what we had written was a little too edgy and rough. In reality, she had totally raped it, rewritten the entire thing so that we didn’t even recognize it. It was this awful, white-boy pablum. She rhymed “life” with “strife,” for God’s sake. <shiver> To add insult to injury, she created these “cute” cartoon raisins to shill it. Those freaking raisins. Poorly drawn knockoffs of the California Raisins. And their names?

“Brazen and Crazen Raisin.” Can you believe it?

The final straw? She put Jason’s and my name in the byline!! As if we’d ever write some crap like that. I was so utterly mortified that I never spoke to her again. I ignored all attempts at contact.

It took years to live it down, and the true explanation sounded like an excuse. The song was never recorded (of course,) and I threw away the original in a fit of pique.

Any other fun stories of shame and humiliation out there?

[Pucette]

Ok, I’ve got one…

I was 8, he was 10. We were in 5th grade. A mutual crush developed, but we didn’t act on in the slightest bit. Nervousness and awkwardness abounded.

My family was going to move to DC in the middle of the year, so I had a going away party at, yes, Chucky Cheese
I got flowers and a teddy bear from another guy in 6th grade, who had a girlfriend but always seemed to be flirting with me. That’s another story. My crushster couldn’t make it though, so his mom drove him by my house one evening shortly before we left. He stood there on the doorstep with two tapes of Strauss Waltzes. Lovely stuff. Yes, we were those kinds of kids. My mom had answered the door, so she was standing there as he gives them to me. Incidentally, she knows that I have a crush on him, and that he probably has a crush on me. So I’m standing there, all awkward about saying good-bye and shit, and he’s equally awkward, looking at his feet.

My mom thinks she can help out. She says to me, in her best French accent: “Why don’t you give each other a kiss?” which of course in France means much less than it does here.

I looked at my feet, turned, and ran off to my bedroom without saying good-bye. I think I was probably crying. My mom got herself a nice hysterical yelling session, but that was the last time I ever saw him.

[Maeglin]

Shame, thy name is Maeglin.

I was 11, and cast in my very first play. I thought it was a frightfully funny piece at the time, but in retrospect it must have been a real loser. Anyway, I was cast as a smart-alecky servant.

Smart aleck? Moi?

I was at camp. Plays were major evening activities which almost the whole camp attended. There were literally hundreds of people stretching their backs and scratching their buttcracks on the hard wooden floor of the theatre.

I had just finished telling off my boss and had the stage alone to myself. I delivered an amusingly scathing monologue and tried to hustle off stage. But there were complications, namely an unexplained wet patch on the floor.

So I fell. Hard. In front of about 400 people. We’re not talking about a skid, or a slip, or even an on-your-ass kind of fall. This fall gave me a cut on my chin where it scraped the ground. I will never forget the sound I made as I belly-flopped onto the wooden proscenium.

The audience roared. And roared some more. And then cheered a bit. I scraped myself off the floor and ran the hell offstage.

I must have had considerable presence of mind, as I was able to get through the rest of the play without bursting into tears.

Apparently, the fall was so priceless that everyone I talked to thought it was planned and choreographed. I got mad props for pulling off such a neat trick on stage, and even the play’s director got more than a few pats on the back.

I want to go back and tell all of my friends from back in the day that my fall was real. I cannot live with this guilt.

MR

[Ogre]

Sweet Jesus! How can you two live with the humiliation?

Actually, now that I’ve tapped this festering well of repressed indignity within myself, I keep thinking of other stories.

Apparently, I’ve had quite the pathetic geek (oops, goober) life.

Here’s another. This is so cathartic!

When I was 14-ish, I had this raging, sloppy, hormone-fired puppy-dog crush on a girl that lived a couple of houses down from me. You know the kind.

Of course she didn’t reciprocate my crush, but I constantly tried to win her over.

We were each supposed to go on vacation with our respective families one summer, me to the East Coast, and she to the desert Southwest. We agreed that we were to bring each other a gift.

I was ecstatic. I began looking for the perfect gift for my One Twue Wuv before we were even out of the frickin’ driveway.

Eventually, we made our way up to Virginia to an aunt’s house. She made these gorgeous (well, creepy, but man they were skillfully done) porcelain dolls with handmade clothes and handpainted faces. I knew I’d found the perfect gift.

My aunt, being a notorious chiseler, let me have one at the bargain price of $50. A FORTUNE to a 14 year old who made money by mowing lawns.

Didn’t matter. This was it. The perfect expression of my regard, because she was really into dolls and stuffed animals. The doll would take a place of honor on her mantel, and she would constantly think of me.

She’d reveal her everlasting devotion to me through her choice of gifts (and perhaps a tender note) as well. We would be United. Inseparable.

Inextricably in Wuv.

We arrived back home, and I immediately set off to her house, prize in hand. I was going to win her over.

We met.

She opened it.

“Waow. Thanks.” She set it carelessly aside. There was no spark of Wuv in her eyes.

I was underwhelmed.

She handed me my gift.

A cheap Las Vegas shot glass. I was 14.

Crushes are a bitch. That one died…eventually.