Remember in September when I had to put a book trailer out, but instead of talking about the book I decided to do a video where I asked my friends to share their stories with the world? And my niece, Gabi, composed and played the lovely tune for it? Here. I’ll show it to you again in case you forgot because it is amazing and it makes me smile and I love all of the people in it.
But here’s a story you never heard…
My publicist and close friend (Marlena) traveled with me for most of the tour and helped me when I got stuck in panic attacks or dark pits. She and her husband (John) helped me through a lot of rough times when I felt overwhelmed and John was the person who edited and polished the Furiously Happy video above. He took several minutes of each person flipping their signs and edited it into what it became. What you may not know is that John made me an alternate video inspired by something that showed up on Patrick Rothfuss‘ video.
I watched it and laughed like mad and I wanted to share it but I was worried that people would think I was being irreverent and flippant, but I was just looking at it again and I realized that irreverent and flippant are exactly the things that I excel at so I thought, “Fuck it. You guys know me enough to love this as much as I do, because in spite of the fact that the subject is serious, laughing at it makes it so much more manageable.” I sent it to a few people on the video and they agreed it was fabulous. And now I feel stupid for ever doubting you.
Awesome!
This is all good things. Now I wish I was brave enough to join in.
Love.
<3 Even your goofy, irreverant version makes me cry. It’s like a wand of feelings! Thank you for using your power wisely, oh She-who-calls-to-pumas!
THAT is neither irreverent or flippant. It IS furiously mad, antic and wonderful!!
Thanks for making me laugh and cry. Again.
Love it!
Awesome…you have the BESTEST people in the world around you!
Umm, love it!! That’s perfectly irreverent in the best kind of way. Because we need a smile sometimes. 🙂
That’s the first time I saw the TOP video. Goddammit, why oh why are you always making me cry?
Now I want to see it set to some other kind of music. Something like Carmina Burana or the theme song to Fraggle Rock.
Just me? Ok then.
“I’m sorry, the drop?”
Love it.
I love this so hard. Thank you for making people’s lives better and reminding every single one of us that we’re not alone.
You make me Happy. Thanks.
And yet, it still makes me cry.
I love them both!
hahahahahaha love it. The first video made me cry (in a good way) and the second made me laugh out loud like a weirdo (in a good way). <3
That. Is. Fabulous!!!
(Thanks for laughter & tears in the office break room – I should know better.)
This one still made me cry, too!!
wow! amazing what music and a few special effects can do to the tone of a video…the first one brought me to tears, the second seemed creepy….
LOVE you Jenny and all you do!!!
Amazing <3
Loved it!
Love, love, love it and the book and that silly raccoon.
THIS IS AWESOME. “Dub Step” had me rolling.
I thought I loved the first one the best until I saw the second one. If ever there was a “Fuck you brain when you don’t work right! You aren’t the boss of me!” that would be it. The first one was touching and motivating, the second was bootstrap grabbing and bird flipping and realizing just how absurd the situation is. Glad you trusted us!
Both versions made me cry, but the second one made me laugh so hard. Beautiful!
Feels AND dubstep, fuck yes woman! squishy hugs, tears and awkward dancing
Patrick’s face as as he laughs after John says Dub Step is wonderful! Am I allowed to add this to my blog?
(Totally. – Jenny)
I love both videos. Good work.
LOVE!
Amen. And thank you.
Made me laugh AND tear up. Way cool. 😉
This is great. Gave me a smile!
I love this. So much so that it made me start to tear up, but I’m at work so I tried to hold it in. Which made me gag and cough. So then I just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. I can only imagine what it sounded like outside my office.
This is so awesome. I hadn’t seen this video back in September and I’m sitting at my desk at work crying just as I did when I saw you in Seattle. Again my only words…thank you. 🙂
ohmygod. So many emotions. The first one made me cry, then smile. The second one made me giggle, then genuinely LOL. Perfection.
I love it! It made me cry too. Happy tears. Thanks.
You are beyond precious! You are my rock star and hero.
#TheBloggessIsMySpiritAnimal
Thank you for sharing that.
I love it. Wish I had had the guts to participate when I had the chance.
That’s a special kind of awesome.
Thank you for inspiring that version Patrick! Loved it!
Ohgod that is amazing! (also I teared up ooops).
Patrick Rothfuss is our family’s favorite author. He spoke in Minnesota last October when he was here for NerdCon. I thanked him for supporting your book when we waited in line to get ours signed. My very tough husband and I both cried watching the original video. Watching this we both laughed…and our toddler started breakdancing in the kitchen. what have we done? Thank you for being you.
Thank you.
I’m smiling and crying and smiling and crying and I hate you and I love you.
LOVE IT!!!!!
Actually got me a little choked up. You bring such amazing things into the world. Please never stop.
I made the mistake of watching the original again at work. It’s allergies people – OKAY!
Love you Jenny <3
Sobbing like a baby with a poopie diaper over this video.
This is, like, the Rey version of the trailer. (Specifically, the part in Star Wars where she [spoilers] [Spoiler] and totally [spoilers] him despite being [spoiled] in a [spoiler.])
Excellent!
Thanks for trusting us. I loved it!
Love the second version even more than the first one, even though they both brought tears to my eyes!
In this world where all we seem to say is “I can’t believe you don’t believe what I believe”?
“Fuck it” is perhaps the most powerful sentence of all. And more of us need to live by it.
Thanks for this.
Awesome sauce!!
The first one made me cry and the second one made it a little lighter.
Awesome!
That is EVERYTHING. (Not sure where that phrase began, but I’m okay with hyperbole.)
You did it again. You hit that spot in my heart that makes me cry hopeful tears, and I love you for that.
Awesome. Epic. Also scary. Or maybe it’s awesome and epic and the scary part just comes from it being that kind of day.
Love you all. You are my tribe. Now someone pass the tissues.
Okay, I laughed. Good one.
I didn’t watch the second one, but I hadn’t seen the first one, and it made me cry like an angry baby, so…thanks? I guess?
(Yes. Thanks.)
That was the best not-a-book-trailer book trailer I’ve ever seen. Okay, it was the very FIRST book trailer I’ve ever seen anyways… but, seriously, this made me cry and laugh at the same time. Absolutely perfect. You, Madam, are such an inspirational unicorn. Thank you!
snort Okay, that was hilarious. 😀
Yep, crying at my desk. Perfect timing since I got a new shrink yesterday, and I’m feeling like we’ve got a plan to lower a rope into the seemingly endless hole I’m in right now.
Brilliant!
Love it. Time for a third book, maybe entitled, TERRIFYINGLY MIRTHFUL.
I am FURIOUSLY HAPPY you shared this with us!
I am choked up….but I’m still a little sad that my broken is in the final video, and my happiness got dropped off. But there it was in the rough cut! YAY!!!! I spend my life helping people find their way out…I am so lucky…. That is an amazing video, we all have found…well…YOU.
Brilliant, just brilliant. Thank you, I love you too you wonder woman.
You are so amazing. Go have some amaretto!
How many times have I told you not to make me cry at work?! It’s a good cry though. As an aside, I am reading your book now and I love it and the insights it gives me into my daughters with mental illness. Thank you.
Weeping at work again: THANKS, JENNY!
No really, thanks, Jenny. Both versions are epic.
BADASS!!! WE ARE BROKEN & WE ARE FURIOUSLY HAPPY
#TeamFurious
#BrokenButPerfect
#TeamBloggess
Gosh I hate it when i cry and laugh at the same time… 🙂
Laughing and crying, I love it so much!
Nope. That did NOT make me cry. Not at all.
emroher: Several years ago, I saw Anthony Hopkins on Inside the Actors’ Studio explaining that a very wise old Jesuit once told him that “Fuck it!” was perhaps the ultimate prayer–you’re basically telling the Big Guy, “OK, I can’t deal with this any more–YOU take over!” Works for me…
Hadn’t actually seen the first video before this (I know, but grad school, etc.); that one made me tear up, but I think I like the new one better–maybe it’s because I’m a NIN fan and the music kind of clicks, maybe because we get to the hopeful bit faster, maybe it’s the animated cat rodeo…whatever. Bravo, Jenny and everyone involved! (But I still think you need to have someone do a proper animated short on the midnight raccoon cat rodeo, damn it…)
LOVE!!!!
The first video made me tear up, and get all sentimental (ew, emotions, go away.)
The second video made me laugh like a hyena (I’m at work) and I thought, “this is far more manageable.”
Both are amazing!
I missed this in September because I was overseas, but I’m glad I saw it now. All kinds of awesome, thank you.
AWESOME SAUCE! I <3 them both.
Darned thing STILL MADE ME CRY. I love/hate you sometimes, Jenny! (But mostly love. Like, 99.99999% love. I just don’t like it when my face swells up from crying.)
Your smile lights up the whole Brady Bunch shot.
Jenny, Did you make this for us and forget to tell us?
http://www.amazon.ca/Exploding-Kittens-NSFW-Explicit-Content/dp/B010TU7LP2/ref=sr_1_5?s=toys&ie=UTF8&qid=1452284286&sr=1-5&keywords=cards+against+humanity
All THE FEELS. I know I say it often, but I am so damn grateful to you for helping me find my tribe!
Also, where can I get one of those blank signs? I need to wallpaper a whole freaking room with them and make it my Happy Place. As an interior designer, I think we may be onto something here! Just saying…💗❤️💗
I love this tribe of weirdos!
Count me in among those that STILL cried!
Love love love love love love love…you get the picture.
Wow! Thank you.
love that video with the dub-
Now, you didn’t warn me to put on my armor and I cried.
Dangit, Jenny! 😉
I love this and there are not enough words to say why. But I so, so needed to see this today. Thank you for sharing this!
I am broken because depression and anxiety make me feel that way.
I am furiously happy because my husband and kids think that I am awesome anyway AND so many of you are like me!
This video makes me cry happy tears. To know I am not alone.
Totally crying from the first vid. Cackling at the second. Glad I had the volume cranked!
I loved the new music. It seemed empowering. Thanks for making me laugh and cry and feel like I’m okay. Again.
That’s brilliant Jenny 😃I loved the music overlay.
Both of these videos are magical!
Is it weird that that one made me cry more than the official one did?
Im laughing and my dog is looking at me like I’M the one that’s nuts….
Love it. That’s all.
Love it. That’s all.
This is awesome. I think I like it better with the dubstep and I hate dubstep! 😛
I am broken because I was physically, emotionally and sexually abused between eight and thirteen years old. I am like a bird with a broken wing, I can still fly but I am wounded. I have about five chronic illnesses, depression and anxiety…but I still shine…thank you for what you do as it helps save me.
LOVE!!!
Furious Dubstep Happiness. 🙂
Shucks, I like ’em both.
You go on and keep being gorgeous and brave and flippant and irreverent, ’cause the world needs more of that.
MWAH.
I just love you.
That’s about it.
xx from MN.
Cool. Even if it is to dubstep.
Hell yeah! It was just the right amount of irreverence.
At least, for me, it was. I am widely considered to be odd. Except that, here I am normal 😉
I am also going to buy your books now instead of just checking them out multiple times from my local library. They are nice, but I always wonder what they are thinking….
That just rocks.
I’m a lit bit furiously unhappy because even with a graduate degree, I can’r read that fast!
Was that Chris Moore with the cookie sign?
(It totally is. ~ Jenny)
That made me laugh and cry!
Furiously Happy
First one made me emotional. Second one made me feel powerful. Totally awesome! Love them both.
They are both awesome. The first makes me cry every time because Pat’s sign, “I feel like a failure every day”, is exactly what I’d write too. Except, that’s Pat Rothfuss. So you know, depression lies. Obviously, right?
The second made me feel really happy, like, hey world! F you! We’re all messed up here in Bloggess Tribe and it’s FABULOUS!
Thanks so much. For everything. Really, really, thank you. You have no idea.
Wow, awesome. Just awesome.
made me cry, it did. and then smile. Jenny, you did this. This amazing video thing. The kind of thing that has meaning in it, for anyone who was in it, and anyone who sees it. The sort of thing that keeps spreading, like the proverbial stone in the proverbial pond.
Dubstep is the music of the furiously happy. Also, probably riverdance.
LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE
Love this…sitting at my desk crying…thank you
It seems ridiculous that the video, with that semi-silly soundtrack, could still make me get choked up, but it did. You’re doing awesome things here in this community, and I hope you realize it.
OK, so I am hiding in the bath tub having a soak, because that’s what my depression craves, but I decided in 2016, I was going to turn it into more of a spa experience, and set a timer so I don’t waste 7 hours in there. Today, I slather on a fancy face mask that promises to make me look like a newborn again, light candles, and cruise Facebook, where I come across this post. I watch the funny video first, then am intrigued into watching the original. Now, I probably should have washed off the super enzyme, going to take 5 layers of flesh off your face “beauty mask”, because when I start sobbing at the beauty of the original video, the tears run down my face, reacting to the nuclear waste I have smeared on my face, and begin to BURN. Like Moriarty wants to do to Sherlock BURN.
Which caused me to laugh and know I am in exactly the right place.
Well, who knew there could be crying in dubstep? The video is amazing!
You’re absolutely right – I DO LOVE IT!!!! Thank you (and all those in the video and those who made the video(s)) for sharing.
The original makes me cry. The Second makes me laugh. They go together brilliantly!
Holy hell! I didn’t understand why “The Name of the Wind” had a cameo, and then I clicked on the Patrick Rothfuss link above the video, duh, and realized he’s in your video! How awesome!
You made me laugh AND cry. I can not tell you how happy I am that I accidentally picked up your first book, then purposely followed and bought furiously happy
I love it! It made me smile and made me cry, all at the same time. And for some reason that I can’t put my finger on, the music is perfect.
Thank you so much for posting the alternative video. I watched both several times today and now I’m feeling slightly less broken myself. Hugs
Wonderful! It makes me remember my tribe is out there too 🙂
I love this! The first one pulls at your heart strings and make you so glad that each person is surviving the struggle. But the second one…. Wow. That one emparts POWER. The feeling that not only they, but YOU have GOT THIS BEAT! (Pun not intended, but now I see it it’s actually kinda awesome, so I’m sticking with it!). Go team yay team ….. YAY ALL OF US!
I wanted to be done tonight. but this made me stay…
I love them both.
I’m not crying. You’re crying.
Okay I’m crying. It feels good.
This makes my heart super happy 🙂
I love this a million times!! I am so happy you shared it (and that you share all the things). I want to play this for myself every morning! You are crazy awesome.
Thanks for posting that, it’s great.
That is just awesome. I am so glad you shared. You have made my day.
Wow. I’m a sobbing mess in the parking lot of Target. I love you all.
Kellianne
I had never seen the OFFICIAL video. I cried watching it. The second non-official video? NOT IRREVERENT! Just awesome!
usually my cold, dead heart doesn’t permit the feels, but this…
Both of these videos make me cry. That makes me Furiously Happy!
I had to watch it several times because I didn’t see anything wrong with it at all, it is awesome!
I felt all week like I was going to cry, was close to tears constantly and at really inappropriate times, but somehow couldn’t actually cry. I don’t now if I’m describing this well, but it’s a terrible feeling. Something about your wonderful video finally triggered it, and I let go and sobbed. I don’t know if I’m going to be ok, but I’m better for tonight. Thank you.
Well, if you wanted to make me cry while I was pooping, mission accomplished.
I dont see anything wrong with that, its a universal truth that dub step (apart from making me want to scream stab someone) makes everything less serious
YAASSSSSS 😀 😀 😀 😀
Too awesome for words.
Laughing and crying. Love you girl!
That is just all kinds of amazing!!!!
That was wonderful, I’m so glad you posted this version too. I cried and smiled for both of them
Love it and thanks for sharing! Also furiously happy that this blog post showed up in my email. 🙂
I love the videos… there would have been far too many words and sentences on my sign if I had been in them.
FINALLY! I know the meaning of Dubstep. Oh, and both videos are just full of awesome
Loved both videos!!!
Always have faith in your tribe!
Both are brilliant; gloriously so, spot on and relevant.
That was awesome! Thanks for sharing it with us. My complaint? what took you so long!
#2 is so much better! Like a really great…#2.
That just made me so fucking happy. Furiously so.
They both made me cry. What is wrong with me. Geesh.
Thank you John for running with Patrick’s Dubstep idea. It is epic! Thank you Jenny for sharing both videos. One makes me cry a sadder happy tears the other just makes me cry cause I’m laughing so hard at dubstep.
OMG, so fabulous! I love both versions!
They are both amazing! The first made me cry, and I couldn’t stop smiling during the second one 🙂 Love the beat!!!
Dude. That’s fabulous!
Love your book
Epitomizes the title of your book. Go laughter and go you!
I loved it!
that made me cry. thank you! <3
I’m listening to your latest book and loving it!
You are my fucking hero! Not like a porn star, but like a bad ass heroine I can look to and hold up as a light when I find myself in the dark!
Wonderful for caregivers as well! My wife pointed out that the tinkle-bell butthole technique was truly the wrong way to bell a cat. Also, here’s a quote from Peter Abrahams, the great South African/Jamaican novelist that explores how I try to live this hazardous life.
“To live with the conscious knowledge of the shadow of uncertainty, with the knowledge that disaster or tragedy could strike at any time; to be afraid and to know and acknowledge your fear, and still to live creatively and with unstinting love: that is to live with grace.”
Peter Abrahams The View from Coyaba
What I find especially funny is if you watch the video on YouTube, it has the statement “This video is unlisted. Be considerate and think twice before sharing.”
It’s okay, Jenny just shared this with a few of her dear friends. 🙂
That was badass. You rock, lady. <3
Hehehe! Nothing offensive in that! We still love you, Jenny! <3
Fuck yeah. I need to make my own sign right now, and look at it every day. The happy side. Because the bad side has been taking over lately. And I’ll hear that music when I do, and think of you and all these other furiously happy people.
OMG. I thought of the people in the first video as survivors, gentle warriors who are finding the light in the dark, and seeing their way to thriving, maybe, some days.
I watched the second video and they were transformed into some bad-ass mother f*****s!!
The power of a soundtrack! And we are some BAMFs! (OK. Sometimes, for me. Every now & then. When I can be.)
Loved both videos thank you for sharing you and your books are amazing!
I love this so much.
I’m broken because perfectionism and anxiety tell me I’m not worth it.
I’m furiously happy because I love myself anyway.
THIS IS EPIC!
Yesssss!!
That was freakin perfect, Jenny. I needed that so much at this very minute. Thank you for putting yourself out there and taking risks that help to patch up wounded souls. Love you, too! :o)
I thank you. ☺ I laughed and cried at the same time while watching the new video. And for that reason, I thank you.
The first one brought tears and the second one brought cheers (and smiles). Thank you for sharing.
I loved them both. Being irreverent and laughing occasionally, or frequently in my case, is a huge part of what gets me through all this crap. I used to shock people but now they know and understand me and share their irreverence and laughter with me. Respectfully though, if you get what I mean. It just shows me how much they accept me and all my “craziness”. I like being furiously irreverent! Weeeeeee! 🙂
That is so excellent. Really. Thank you.
One price of the antidepressants that keep me alive & (barely) able to work, is that it is almost impossible for me to cry anymore. These videos had me sobbing, & that’s GOOD!
I never got around to watching the original video until now, and I started crying like a baby. Then I watched the second and I’m laughing my head off. And crying like a baby.
Thank you. For everything.
This made me laugh AND cry!
Thank you, Jenny!
I appreciate you more with every post. You make me laugh and smile every day.
Glad you shared. There is nothing wrong with laughter intermingling with mental illness. I want to make sure I let that happen more often in my life this year. You do it well with the humor and the serious.
Had to laugh. 🙂
I remember watching the original trailer before but did not notice before…is that Felicia Day?!
(Yup! ~ Jenny)
I loved it! It made me laugh/cry <3
Love them both!!
Totally started crying. Love it.
I need you to know that I’m currently reading the chapter of furiously happy called “we’re better than galileo. Because he’s dead.” and bawling because it so perfectly sums up who I am that I want to rip it out of the book and hand it to people who are confused by my anxiety. Thank you so much for being you, and for helping me accept me. No one has ever made this much of a difference for me.
I need you to know that I’m currently reading the chapter of furiously happy called “we’re better than galileo. Because he’s dead.” and bawling because it so perfectly sums up who I am that I want to rip it out of the book and hand it to people who are confused by my anxiety. Thank you so much for being you, and for helping me accept me. No one has ever made this much of a difference for me.
I just realized that I never had a chance to hold my own signs. I am broken because Grandpa was an incestuous, alcoholic pedophile. I am Furiously Happy because Mommy did not allow Daddy to follow in his father’s footsteps, and somewhere along the way, I figured out how to forgive Grandpa before he Dropped Dead.
Bitter? Actually, no, I’m not. I’m a Furiously Happy Survivor and member of the Church. You know the one. Jenny’s my Pope. And I LOVE <3 LOVE <3 LOVE the “dubstep” version of the “trailer”.
Thanks for blog , your books and not making set up another account to post . I have never laughed so hard as when I read your books which made me feel not alone and in such a good way. So much joy I got them for my mom ,friend and to my new hairdresser yesterday
My husband is still not such about your books but that’s because he is now living with taxidermist squirrels and a chipmonk. Names welcome I post you a pick but can’t paste to up picture.
Thank you again and I look forward to more bloggers from you to make me laugh.
Ps I won the critters at 2 am in bid eBay but I made sure death by natural causes.
My husband said the sellers may have lied but I am choosing to not believe it😀
Thanks to John for making, thanks to Jenny for sharing but most important, thanks to everyone in it. All beautiful!
I love them both!
And I’ve learnt two new words today: irreverent and flippant
I had to look them up for not being a mother-tongue speaker.
This second video made me cry. In the “oh, my gosh, I am not alone and people are wonderfully broken right alongside me” kind of way.
This made me cry, and then I had to play it for my person to explain why I was crying, which made me cry more. And I never cry, so: effective! Congratulations on the awesome book.
And now we need a third version: “I am broken” with the pretty melody your niece wrote and “I am furiously happy” with the other music. Too literal? Too obvious? Yeah, but it could be funny.
Jenny,
Thank you for writing this book. It helped me feel not so alone and made me laugh very hard. I know everyone is crazy, but it’s the ones who don’t know they are that are dangerous. You are definitely one of the crazy people who knows you are crazy…which makes you safe and less crazy than the rest. :o)
Linda
Almost certain that I like the dubstep a tiny bit more than the sweet sensitive music. Both are great tho. Gotta go buy that book now.
OMG I just watched your trailer and when the people flipped their signs and smiled it made me furiously happily cry.
Wow, the second one is WAY BETTER!!! Thank you for sharing!
You should have this….Maybe you already do. Are these the turkeys you had when you were little? https://www.facebook.com/1157905574226865/videos/1237655869585168/
Absolutely LOVE these 🙂
And I LOVE you too 🙂
Still cried at the second video even thoe it was pretty hilarious.
Thank you for this. Yesterday was pretty rough and this helped. Funny how the little things can turn us around and make us see the light
THIS VIDEO MADE ME LAUGH AND CRY AT THE SAME TIME I’m pretty sure this is exactly what furiously happy is
Saw this and thought of you. I think you have handed out quite a few sticks. http://themetapicture.com/found-in-a-therapists-office-wall/
I giggled at the unofficial version, then cried my eyes out all over again. Goddamn it!
My wife bought me Furiously Happy for Christmas…my concentration is so bad right now that I can’t read it. I can however look at the cover and way down inside feel a little spark of happy…I love that fu#cking raccoon. Thank you
My wife gave me a copy of Furiously Happy for Christmas. My concentration is so bad at the moment that I haven’t been able to focus enough to read it yet. I can however look at the cover and feel, way down deep somewhere, a little sliver of happy. I love that fu@king raccoon. Thank you.
Ps. This may have double posted…I’m a lurker not a poster really and what I am sure is a simple process seems to have gone pear shaped on the first attempt.
thank you for the video and thanks to anyone who has help people to feel better about themselves.
I love that official one. Awesome. Made my eyes tear up slightly. I’ve got my own broken parts.
Have you ever heard this song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UabGi_jZRPM
“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.”
― Barbara Bloom
Just think… you filled your cracks with gold figuratively AND literally! (but hopefully not THE crack. 😉 )
I probably will never share a VIDEO about my beautful broken-ness, I don’t like how I come across in person, but here’s an essay about one of my many broken facets that I thought I’d share with you because you’ve shared so much with me (and my daughter, Emma who swears that we are related just based on your life and how it works):
I suppose my sensitivity about my size, and by extension, Emma, my 12 year old daughter’s, goes way back to K-12 when it seemed that the title of “smartest-prettiest-richest-musically talented-athletically talented-best hair-best dressed-most popular-most likely to succeed, most likely to be liked” was seemingly taken by one person, good grief – it had to be condensed down into, “Most Likely to Succeed at Everything” so it would fit on the trophy plaque!
This left the less-desirable slots of “Weirdest”, “Fattest”, “Sweatiest Back”, and “Most likely to Cause a Fight” or “Best at Shoving Toothpicks Under their Fingernails while Eating a Bible.”
Even there, the competition was fierce.
I am quite lazy, so “Ummm, no thanks!”
For the less discerning there was, “Dumb as a Rock but Indifferent About It”, “First to Grow a Mustache” (male division, don’t know about the female division, it was none of my business), “ADHD Poster Child” (again, too much work) with “Most Likely to End Up Dead beneath a Soda Machine”, and “Trampiest” bringing up the rear but gaining fast. (Again, a no go for the last two – for one thing, I couldn’t afford to even go NEAR a soda machine and I didn’t like being touched at the time, (Still have my misgivings about that to this day, over 20 years later.))
So, aside from any other unasked for titles I’d earned over the years, I won “Smallest Biped in the Class of ’85” by default the whole damned time I was incarcerated at SoBoCo. (Thank God we didn’t have a canary in the classroom, or I would have had to keep looking for another place in life due to the mere technicality that birds are bipeds and generally shorter than I, unless they are ostriches, emus, or something called a rhea. Or a rooster on a barn roof.)
That, aside from the coveted “Most Creative” which as far as I could tell was probably already taken by the aforementioned human wonder.
I didn’t feel like taking her on for it because I knew she’d win, as she’d already won “Most Likely to Succeed at Anything They Try” hands down for the last five years, five and a half if you included kindergarten.
So I settled for being, “Smallest Person In the Class of ’85, which was easy: I was, to quote Lady Gaga, “Born that way”.
Being short required NO EFFORT whatsoever, unless it involved high shelves and hemming up trouser legs and rolling up sleeves. Smug in my place in life as shortest biped, and little else, I came in one morning to find my low to the ground crown had been STOLEN.
By the new girl who was thrown to the fifth grade edition Class of ’85 – she was a good TWO FUCKING INCHES shorter than me. Son of a bitch!
And she was cuter!
And she had long red gold hair!
And it was naturally curly!!!
Worse, she had pretty gold wire-rim glasses while I had to cope with the shitty cheap plastic frames that my folks could barely afford, which dated back to the third grade because again, all we could afford to do was pop in new lenses every time my prescription changed.
And her clothes were newer and fit and weren’t ones from left over from third grade like mine because my folks bought two sizes bigger and didn’t rotate them out until they fell apart/I’d FINALLY outgrown them years later because I grew very slowly plus we couldn’t afford clothing that fit – we had to make stuff last. (If you don’t believe me, I finally threw away a pair of jeans from the fifth grade that I finally fit into during my SENIOR year in college.)
And there she was, the fairy princess who stole my cut-down crown, twinkle twinkle twinkle. People even mentioned that she’d stolen my crown like it was a GOOD thing: “Look, now you don’t have to be the shortest person in the class.”
Great, guess I’ll go sit in the back and finish reading the damned set of encyclopedias collecting dust beside the trash can. I’d already finished “B” at this point and was well into “C” as in
“C”rystal”.
Crown dutifully handed over, I had nothing. Seeing as I didn’t care to compete for “Most Likely to End Up Dead beneath a Soda Machine” and frankly, “Most Athletic” was already taken if not out of my reach because of my innate indifference to sports and/or inborn clumsiness.
Yep. I was sunk.
Sink.
Sank.
Sunk.
Eventually I regained my crown, but I don’t think anybody noticed – my rival in lack of height moved a few months later – I was so low to the ground and at the back of the social pack that when the crown fell in my lap by default, there was no celebration, no parade complete with rose petal confetti and sixteen matched white Arab mares pulling a golden carriage festooned with rose garlands (or more likely, a little red wagon borrowed from the Kindergarten class down the hall and festooned by them with toilet paper, the generic stuff from the school restroom – not Charmin, pulled by a bad tempered Shetland pony of uncertain color, also borrowed).
But I did, and unannounced as it was, it was a relief to have the one thing I was good at returned to me. Even if it was something that I couldn’t help.
Short is not always a bad thing if it helps you keep your place in the world.
Gosh the official one makes me cry each time I watch it. Can’t wait to read this book!