Monday, June 10, 2013

FML Madness - Never Fear!

Oh, Mondays, how I loathe thee!

So, slight change in plans.  I've decided to extend the contests on all the entries until the 25th to give people a chance to enter.  I want everyone who wants the opportunity to enter to have a chance.  So I'll announce the winners of all the contests on June 25th.

Now, on to the humiliation!

Since my friends were kind enough to let me share their humiliating and hilarious stories, I figure it's only fair for me to share one of my own.

I'm pretty sure I've shared my "Never fear! Robin's here!" story, and my sad story about the girl who wouldn't give me the time of day because I didn't have a car, so I'm going to have to take you a little further back to find an appropriately devastating story.  
It begins at the 8th grade Halloween dance.  Now, before I start, the thing you have to understand is that when it came to dating and sex and all of those things, my understanding of them was limited. I knew of them on a rational level, but the abstracts of it all hadn't really sunk in.  What I knew in 8th grade was that boys were supposed to "like" girls and a boy's very masculinity was tied to whether or not girls "liked" him back.  Since I was neither athletic or outgoing, I knew I needed to have a girlfriend to keep from becoming the object of ridicule.  
Back then, I had a lot of girl friends as well as guy friends.  I had always managed to maintain friendships across the different cliques despite not really belonging to any of them.  My best girl friend was a girl named Lexi.  She was as close to a boy as a girl could be.  She was hilarious and crude and fun to talk to.  I'd harbored a "crush" on her all year, and at the eighth grade dance, I had decided I was going to tell her I "liked" her and suggest that she should be my girlfriend.  Now, I knew she usually dated older guys.  Guys in high school!  And I knew I couldn't compete with them, but we were such good friends that I figured she would see the logic in us going out.
I was wrong.
Back to the dance.  I'm pretty sure I was a vampire.  Or maybe a pirate.  I honestly can't remember.  What is seared into my brain is the moment I asked her to go out with me.  Not the words I said or the music that was playing or even what she was wearing.  It was the look on her face.  The smirk that became a smile that became a laugh that became a look of pure terror as she realized that I wasn't pranking her.  As she realized I was dead serious.
Then came the pity.  The, "I like you as a friend."  Standing on the periphery of the dance floor where all my friends could see, I was laughed at and friendzoned.  But that wasn't the worst part.
See, for someone like me, someone who was intellectually advanced but emotionally retarded, that very first real rejection was worse than a rusty nail through the scrotum.  It was worse than being swarmed by fire ants in the hot, Florida sun.  It was the most mortifying moment of my short, tragic life.
So I did what any other 13 year-old boy who'd just been rejected in full view of everyone he knew would do.  I started bawling, ran into the bathroom, and locked myself in the handicapped stall.  
It took three of my friends and a priest to coax me out.  Lexi and I didn't talk much after that.  FML.

How about I give a copy of FML today?  I've got a ton and I love giving them out.  All you have to do is tell me your favorite halloween costume in the comments.

And come back tomorrow when Emilia Rhodes, the amazing editor without whom FML would never have exited, shares an FML story of her own.


7 comments:

  1. Oh my gawd, Shaunie! You poor little dude. I might have required a priest in that scenario myself.

    I remember being severely rejected (and totally torn up about it) in eighth grade too. I actually got the girl to say yes, and we went to the dance together, but then she ditched me--like I seriously could not find her the whole dance. Then at school on Monday, she told me she wasn't into me. I was crushed!

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    1. Actually, the priest at that middle school was the basis for Father Mike in The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley. He was one of the coolest priests I've ever known.

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  2. That makes me so sad! Where's 8th grade Shaun...I want to give him a hug! *sigh* growing up is so hard. Stories like this (and several similar ones of my own) honestly made me question whether or not I wanted to have children :) The thought of this stuff happening to them destroys me and it hasn't even happened yet.

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    1. Ha! Don't worry, 8th grade Shaun survived :)

      I couldn't imagine being a parent and having to watch your kids go through stuff like that. I credit my strength now to my mom for not being overprotective. She helped me through the rough times, but instilled in me a do-it-yourself mentality that helped shape me.

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  3. Oh, eighth grade rejection. Ouch. I wasn't brave enough to ask out my eighth grade crush myself---I sent a friend as a messenger, so at least I didn't have to watch the expression(s) on said crush's face as he told her I "wasn't his type."

    As for Halloween costumes, I was a lucky kid with a talented seamstress for mom, and my favourite costume should definitely be one of the gorgeous handmade outfits she made me, but for pure "LOL this a good story" value, I'm partial to the Halloween when I was a high school senior and threw together my own costume and went as a tornado. Sadly, I can't take credit for the idea, which came from a friend who found it online on a list of easy DIY costumes somewhere. I wore all grey, and spent a stupidly long time (I have neither inherited nor cultivated my mother's sewing skills) sewing plastic farm animals, trees, and even a little tractor to my shirt. When someone asked what I was, I would explain that I was a tornado and spin around.

    (Also, hi, I just read The Deathday Letter, completely loved it, and came to find you here on the internets. Embarrassing fanmail re: said book may be in your inbox soon.)

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    1. I love that you went as a tornado. That is pretty awesome.

      Trust me when I say that this made my day. I'm so glad you loved Deathday :) Email anytime!

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  4. Ouch! That's a bit more traumatic than my middle school halloween dance story, which was really just the sad fact that I tried to make my own Star Trek costume out of an old sweatshirt. The results were... not so cool. Also, I think that was the year I got roped into asking girls out for my guy friends. Bad plan, guys. Just sayin'. Also, there was ridiculous and embarrassing dancing somewhere in the midst of all that hiding along the walls. Oh, and the part where I had zero interest in girls and couldn't quite figure out what all the fuss was about...

    Glad we survived somehow!

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Keep it clean, keep it classy, and jokes are always appreciated.