Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster

by Kristen Johnston

  My parents had the best of intentions when they sent all three of their kids to this school, which was renowned for its academic excellence. What they couldn’t have known was that it was also hell on earth if you weren’t friends with the “in” people, didn’t wear the “in” clothes, didn’t have the “in” haircut, and weren’t blessed with a perfect chin that would jut out charmingly whenever one would utter such bons mots as “Eau my Gaud, Stacy. Can you even believe she wore that sweater again? It is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.”

  Looking back, I do find it a bit fascinating that such a large percentage of this supposedly religious school’s student body was made up of kids whose behavior I’m quite sure would’ve bummed Jesus out. Unfortunately, after eight years, instead of a top-notch education all I left with was a boatload of self-esteem issues and a seething dislike of Catholicism. Not quite what my parents had hoped for, I’m sure.

  Of course, not all of the kids were awful. Many were downright lovely, in fact. And I do have some nice memories of my time spent at this school. For instance, one year I WON the science-fair contest with my best friend, Heather (one of the lovely ones). She and I spent an entire afternoon figuring out how to make paper from scratch. I’m still a bit lost as to why we won, but it was the only time in all of grade school that I felt kind of smart. (Even if I did nothing but dramatically read aloud the directions from some book as I ate Fig Newtons.)

  If you’d like a crack at winning your science fair, here’s the recipe! Simply ask Heather’s mom to mash wood chips in a blender until it almost breaks, add some other gunk, have her bake it for a long time, and then lay the whole mess out to dry on the deck. The end result should closely resemble a stucco ceiling. Triumph!

  My brother was a few grades above me, a brilliant, shy, sensitive virtuoso violinist, and I absolutely, unabashedly worshipped him. Regrettably, this was not a feeling shared by his classmates, and he was tortured so viciously, so relentlessly, it must have really done a number on him. But that’s just a guess. We’ve never spoken about it. All I know is bearing witness to it sure did a number on me.

  Because for years, I saw him verbally attacked, punched, slapped, tripped, shoved, and once even hung up on a tree by the band of his underwear. My heart just broke for him, over and over, but I was never able to tell him this without sounding like an irritating younger sister. Eventually, I learned not to discuss it with him, or anyone else.

  Everything changed one dark and miserable autumn day when I was around nine. I was daydreaming my way through some boring class when the whole class was jolted by a scream of pure terror coming from outside. My blood immediately ran cold. Was that my brother? We all ran to the huge window overlooking the football field and, despite the teacher’s protestations, pressed our faces against the glass.

  At first, my mind couldn’t understand what I was seeing. But within seconds I realized that it was a mob of four or five boys attacking someone. The frenzy had whipped up a large mass of dust and dirt, and I remember the kid part of my brain thought, “Pig-Pen,” at the very same moment my newer, growing-up brain thought, They’re killing my brother. I’d never seen him being assaulted like this. I honestly thought he was being murdered, right before my eyes. I was incapacitated, unable to move or speak.

  “Oh, my dear God!” the teacher cried as she ran for help, which broke the spell. One of my classmates giggled nervously, and at that moment my grief and fear thankfully crystallized into a swirling ball of volcanic rage.

  The “Pig-Pen” incident was the catalyst for a completely impetuous and ill-advised decision, the first of many I made (and, yes, would continue to make) throughout my life. It was maybe a month or two later, at the end of recess. The bell had rung and most of the kids had dutifully filed back indoors. I was dawdling along as usual, lost in thought. Then, just as I reluctantly started to yank the door open, I saw a reflection flash in the glass of someone far behind me. There was no mistaking who it was, Danny, usually called “Sully” Sullivan, hockey player, choirboy, and my brother’s most dedicated tormentor. He was a massive, stupid, doughy kid with bright red hair, freckles, and laughing pooh-colored eyes that masked his budding psychosis. Despite the cold November day, he was wearing shorts and was clearly returning from fetching a wayward football. As he plodded gracelessly across the cement toward the doors, I became aware that we were alone.

  The molten ball of rage that had been lying dormant for weeks instantly came alive, and all I knew was that somehow, some way, I had to find a way to release it. That’s when I found myself exceedingly grateful for the very thing I’d always been most ashamed of (until then, that is). I had fucked-up feet. I almost smiled. Because from the time I was six or seven, I had been forced to wear hideous corrective shoes due to my excessively high arches. Without them, my feet tended to roll inward, which would then cause my knees to bash into each other. Therefore, instead of the soft Docksides everyone else wore, I was doomed to wear these very strong, resilient, and quite unbecoming shoes called brogues (which ironically originated in Sully’s ancestral homeland of Ireland). Oh, how I loathed those shoes. Until that day, that is.

  Even though adrenaline was coursing through my body, I patiently waited until he was right next to me. He barely glanced at me, the weird little girl with the spaghetti legs poking out of her huge plaid uniform. Then, when he was close enough for me to smell his sour sweat, the volcano blew. With all the rage in my black heart, almost as if I was possessed by the Bionic Woman or the Incredible Hulk, I kicked his shin as hard as I could with the reinforced toe of my sturdy shoe.

  I can still hear the loud thewwack! that reverberated across the pavement when my foot connected with his bare shin. It sounded as if I had hit a coconut with a two-by-four. I kicked him so hard my right leg trembled for days afterward. He immediately dropped the football and bent over, screaming in agony, and grabbed his fat, already-bruising shin.

  He looked up at me. “Wh-h-y-y???!” he asked plaintively.

  He was crying. I had made Danny Sullivan, the scariest kid in school, the boy even the male teachers couldn’t make eye contact with, weep like a girl. For a split second I

  just stood there, in absolute shock. Then, I began weeping like a girl and ran away as fast as my Irish corrective shoes would carry me.

  “You won’t like me when I’m angry.. . .”

  Unfortunately, when word got to my brother, he was so mortified that he stopped speaking to me for a long, long time. (Who could blame him? I mean, your little sister trying to slay your dragon? NOT COOL.) I wished I could find the words to explain to him that I couldn’t help it, that it was for me as much as for him, but, as usual, they never came.

  A few months later, on an ice-cold but gorgeous Saturday in February, long after I had dropped my guard, Sully exacted his revenge. I was skating with a bunch of kids on the enormous neighborhood pond. Heather, Tharah, and myself were playing “Olympics,” which meant we were engaged in a very tight battle for the ladies’ short-program gold medal. Due to her lisp and her ever-present back brace, Tharah made a brilliant (and hilarious) Russian judge. I was about to execute a very tricky triple axel (which meant hopping to one skate and holding up your other leg until it burned), when an odd hush descended over the entire pond.

  I looked around at the crowd of kids, puzzled. A feeling of foreboding crackled through the cold air. Just then, I thought I caught a glimpse of bright red hair. I barely had time to think, Hey, that’s weird. Doesn’t he usually skate in the hockey rink with those other boys? when my mouth went dry. Not only was it him, but he was with four other huge boys, and they were all casually holding their hockey sticks as they skated toward me.

  I was stock-still, unable to move as everyone else vanished like smoke. They couldn’t be here to hurt me, there are parents here, I thought desperately. As they came closer, and I saw their cold black eyes, I was finally galvanized to move and my trembling legs began to skate away from them as fast as they could. Unfortunately
, this meant that I was skating farther and farther away from the tiny lodge where the parents could see us. I was so eager to get away from them, I didn’t realize this fatal mistake until it was too late.

  Within minutes I was at the far edge of the pond and I was caught. Towering over me were fir trees and five enormous bullies. There was nowhere else to go. I just stood there, shivering from the cold and terror as Sully skated up to me. I closed my eyes and Sully, without even saying a word, made a fist and punched me with all the brute force he possibly could.

  Except he didn’t punch my face as I was grimly expecting. Instead, his massive fist plowed, with the force of a battering ram, directly into my nine-year-old vagina. The force of it swooped me up into the air and flipped me over into the snowbank, barely missing a tree. I gracelessly landed in a heap, the wind knocked out of me. When I could finally breathe, I curled into a tight ball of pain and shame, my mittened hands holding my throbbing crotch. Eventually, tears streaming down my face, I looked up to see the five boys laughing, the setting sun making them glow like angels.

  In my school, you were considered “out” if you wore the wrong brand of socks. Therefore, due to my penchant for footwear that made me look like a mad Scottish golfer and because I was a book-loving, “learning disabled” theater geek with a loud mouth, I think it’s safe to say I didn’t come close to being “in.”

  However, I soon discovered being “out” was the least of my problems. Because at around ten years old, something unsettling began to occur that transported me way, way beyond the world of “out” and crash-landed me directly onto planet “Freak.” Up until then, I was average height, same as everyone else. But overnight I started to grow. And grow. And just when I thought it was over, I’d relax, thinking, Thank God THAT’s over with! I’d suddenly begin to grow some more. I grew so furiously, so relentlessly that by the time I was twelve, I was almost the height I am now, six feet tall. I towered over every single person at the school, even the priests. My ever-lengthening shins and forearms would actually hurt from growing, and the bigger I got, the more I’d slouch, praying I would appear smaller. Unfortunately, all this did was make me look like a giant Freak with crappy posture.

  I have a clear memory of being driven by my sobbing mother (in her fur coat over her tennis whites) from Milwaukee to Chicago so I could see a specialist because she and my father were worried that I was literally becoming a giant. As in one of those eight-foot-tall people who have funny voices and have to have clothes especially made for them.

  To my mother’s eternal relief, I wasn’t a giant. To my soul-crushing horror, I was simply a Freak. At least, that’s what I secretly called myself. I was the master tormentor of my own mind, a bully toward myself so hateful and venomous I even rivaled Amy Grable, the undisputed ruler of the our grade in the vast kingdom known as grade school. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so powerful and manipulative in my entire life. And I’m in show biz, for Christ’s sake. I’m not sure which came first: Amy’s derision toward me or my hatred for myself. I do know one thing: my self-esteem was utterly decimated by both of us.

  There is nothing like the absolute power we give to the cruel when we’re young. Somehow, as if our whole class were filled with tiny Squeaky Frommes, we all just accepted that Amy was our QUEEN, simply because she said it was so. We were her mere disciples, there to do her bidding and (for a tiny faction that included Tharah and myself) to be available at all times for her torture. Like all good/evil queens, the gods had smiled upon her in almost every way. She had perfect teeth; full, glossy lips; long, shimmering blond hair (that I’m still convinced she got professionally blown out every morning); alabaster skin; long legs; and, at an outrageously young age, proudly displayed a set of real, honest-to-goodness boobs (not the Kleenex-in-the-bra boobs like the rest of us). It didn’t matter what sex you were, you could simply not refrain from openly soaking in her Amy-ness. She only had two minor drawbacks. She was dumb as a box of hammers and mean as a snake.

  It was Amy who first anointed me “the Jolly Green Giant,” which is not all that much better than “the Freak,” if you ask me. I’ll never forget her constant greeting to me: “Hey, Jolly Green Giant, how’s the weather up there?” or, on uniform-free social occasions, “Looks like the Jolly Green Giant’s expecting a flood!” and on and on. These comments were always followed by gales of laughter from her subjects. Seems stupid, and even rather banal, I know. But imagine something you can’t help, like your height, shoved in your face over and over, every single day, for years.

  Because my existence was beginning to resemble a never-ending game of Pin the Tail on the Freak, one could hardly blame me for escaping whenever possible. I did this by existing almost 100 percent of the time in my imagination. I spent almost every single class from grade school through high school lost in a safe world of my making. Even then, I couldn’t bear to be present or fully in my own skin. Even then, I couldn’t wait to be other.

  Only recently has it dawned on me that this was unusual behavior.

  I’d pay attention in English and history classes, or if I liked a teacher. But most of the time, the bell would ring, I’d look down at my book, and I’d be gone, totally gone, for the next hour. Sometimes my fantasies would be sort of conventional, like I’d be a rock star’s girlfriend. (I’ve always had a preference for the drummers, don’t know why.) Sometimes I’d enter the world of whatever book I was reading at the time. Sometimes I’d be an actress in New York dating a drummer. But my most common fantasy was much simpler: I’d be the new girl at my school, my name would be something normal like Becky or Lisa, and I’d be so teeny-tiny and gosh-darned cute that people couldn’t resist picking me up and kissing my adorable cheeks when they passed me in the hallway. I would be so enchanting that even Amy would invite me over for a swim in her new pool.

  Unfortunately, I was other so often that eventually I was sent to special classes for kids with learning disabilities. Which added yet another name for kids to call me: “Retard.” I remember crying into my pillow many nights, railing at God, Seriously, now I’m retarded and a giant? What’s next, Lord, epilepsy? Surprisingly, the good Lord bellowed, Certainly, why not, ye Freak?

  Thus, from age seven to twelve or so, I had epileptic seizures. I don’t remember much about them, only that one second everything would be normal, and the next second I’d be on the ground, kids would be crying and staring at me, and a horrified Father Ryan would have his meaty paw wrapped around my tongue to prevent me from choking. One time, I remember riding my bike home from school when it happened. I came to just as a terrified woman was rushing to me from her car, thinking she had hit me. I played it off, saying I must have hit an unseen bump and I was fine. I walked the rest of the way home on rubbery legs and never told a soul. The seizures stopped as soon as I hit puberty, which, interestingly enough, coincided with leaving grade school.

  Despite that my life at this point was sort of a bummer (for an upper-middle-class, Midwestern kid with plenty to eat, lots of fun vacations, a beautiful home, and parents who loved her, that is), I knew something none of my classmates did. Deep inside, I knew someday I’d win. Because only I knew that the girl they loved to make fun of, the girl who was only invited to slumber parties when they were absolutely forced to, the girl who always said the wrong thing at the worst possible moment—only I knew that this girl, this stupid, spindly stick figure with a terrible personality actually disguised a future FAMOUS ACTRESS. Or FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER. Sometimes it was FAMOUS MODEL. And sometimes, it was simply a FAMOUS PERSON. If I was FAMOUS, it would mean that I was NOT ME, which would, in turn, make me HAPPY.

  Finally, when I was around eleven, in my final year of grade school, things began to get somewhat better. And just like Dorothy discovered at the end of Oz, it was all because of a gift that I’d had all along and never fully appreciated. It was a weapon I soon discovered was even more powerful than being petite, pretty, smart, or popular. I was funny.

  I had
spent years entertaining my family and a few friends with wisecracks, or convincing my poor sister to perform in comedic masterpieces (written, directed, and of course, starring me) for our mom and dad and our neighbor Bitsy, but I had no clue that being funny was a skill that other people would like.

  I don’t remember the exact event, but when I eventually discovered by accident that if I was funny at school, not only would people like me more but I would also be protected from most of the torment (at least, where it mattered the most, on the outside). This is where I began my love affair with self-deprecation, which clearly continues to this very day.

  I soon became aware of the stunning fact that if I made fun of myself first (and better), it would remove all the power from those about to make fun of me. This was a total revelation. After years of begging my confused mother to buy me the “sweater with the tiny polo player, not the sweater with the tiny alligator!,” after thousands of hours spent trying to look a certain way or be a certain way, or talk a certain way—I just couldn’t fucking believe it. This whole time it had been this easy?

  Finally, one day in eighth grade, just before graduation, I had had enough of the Dictatorship of Amy. I was in the crowded cafeteria, eating something gross, most likely trying to crack people up, when I felt Her Highness approach, surrounded by her ever-present cult of slightly less attractive but just as evil girls.

  She began to say, “How’s the—”

  That was it. Before I could stop myself, I abruptly turned to her and loudly pronounced to the entire room, “Amy, I’d like to give you a helpful hint. On behalf of the entire school, I really think you should at least try to think of something else to say, because people are starting to wonder if maybe you’re kind of dumb.”