Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence was probably one of the funniest, most painfully awkward childhood memoirs that I’ve ever read. Thank god for Paul Feig’s horrible experiences, though, because it’s easy to see how everything he went through in school shaped him as the incredibly funny and talented man that we enjoy today. Hell, it’s obvious that half of Freaks and Geeks (the really painful nerdy parts) were lifted directly from his memories.
“I was afraid of anyone in a costume. A trip to see Santa might as well have been a trip to sit on Hitler’s lap for all the trauma it would cause me… Add to this an irrational fear of small dogs that saw me on more than one occasion fleeing in terror from our neighbor’s four-inch-high miniature dachschund as if I were being chased by the Hound of the Baskervilles and a chronic case of germ phobia, and it’s pretty apparent that I was–what some of the less politically correct among us might call–a first-class pussy.”
Feig bares it all here. His terror at showering in the locker room, his discovery of a lovely feeling while shimmying up the rope in gym class, the torment he received from everyone from teachers to classmates to bus drivers. One of the funniest chapters deals with his obsession with a blonde wig that belongs to his mother — how he looks so pretty in it that he falls in love with his own reflection. The writing is top notch — he’s sarcastic and pokes fun at himself constantly. Just a really great read from a very talented man.
Sounds funny… wonder if there’s an audio book? I usually manage these kinds of “let’s be embarrassed about my life together” books if the author’s laughingly reading it with me.