High School Gay Nerd

I feel like everyone is or was a child prodigy, except me.

For example, at age 17, Bo Burnham starred in a half hour comedy special on comedy central. Not one of those 2-minute “who gives a shit” spots on a comedy mash up show; he recorded a full 30-minute show. Incidentally, 30 minutes is about how long I was able to hold a job as a bag boy at Kroger when I was 17. Among other things, I think the thing that prevented me from being a child prodigy was my inability to keep grocery carts from smashing into parked cars.

Another problem is that I lack a drama background. If I could do high school over again (which fuck no, I wouldn’t; that shit was hell) I would join the drama club.

I didn’t when I had the chance because I was worried that other kids would call me gay. I also didn’t bring my homework home because I worried that kids would see me carrying textbooks home and call me a nerd. I was too insecure to even realize that gay and nerd weren’t even proper insults outside of Kentucky. Being a gay nerd is actually a pretty successful way to be in most areas of the country- just look at David Sedaris or the guy who invented flesh lights shaped like assholes. Ironically my fear of being thought of by my idiot classmates as a gay nerd is how I ended up failing out of school and working third shift at a warehouse, which is incidentally where all of my idiot classmates ended up working as well. I would have stayed in school if someone had thought to warn me that by dropping out I was actually securing my spot in permanent high school, by means of working minimum wage jobs with the same people I hated in high school.

I don't know if you currently or have ever in the past worked at a warehouse, but there's one thing you need to know about the experience: 90% of your white co-workers are racist, sexist, and homophobic, and to them, a warehouse is an open platform in which to express these values with zero shame. It seems that these people correlate warehouse to manliness, manliness to exclusion, and exclusion to acting like a complete, un-evolved d-bag.

True story, I endeavored to thumb tack a printed out portrait of Martin Luther King JR. to a bulletin board at work on MLK day, because it seemed to be the only national holiday that the human resources department didn’t want to celebrate in some embarrassing fashion. One of my co-workers approached me, unaware that I had put the picture up on the wall myself, and remarked, “Ew! You should take that down.” I was beyond my limit, considering it was a Tuesday, the worst of all days; sorry Garfield (or Jim Davis). I was angry, and it was a self righteous anger, which is the best kind of anger because you know just how fucking right you are to be angry the whole time. It feels like being on fire, but sexier. I let him have it, “ew? You seriously are saying “ew” to Martin Luther King? You are a useless piece of shit and I’m sincerely indignant in regards to having to co-populate Earth with scum like you. How dare you drag me into your racist shit? I’m not racist and just because you have a skewed, narrow minded view of the world doesn’t mean every one else does. Fuck you, you racist asshole.” The guy was visibly startled by my outrage and for a moment I thought that he wasn’t going to say anything at all, which made me feel like I had won, for once, but then he finally pulled himself together and said, “Dude, fuck you; that’s a picture of Morgan Freeman.”

I’m just kidding about that last part; I actually didn’t say anything to the racist guy. I just walked away like a pansy. Also, of course I know the difference between MLK and Morgan Freeman, I’ve seen Snakes on a Plane like 50 t…wait, I’m going to just stop myself right there, that’s Samuel L Jackson. Oh no, I’m turning into one of them! Ugh, that joke is so hackneyed. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here, guys. Not yet, at least. No, not until I figure out a way to make a rhombus roll.