GAWKY
Tales of an Extra Long Awkward Phase
Copyright © 2013 Margot Leitman
Published by
Seal Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
1700 Fourth Street
Berkeley, California
www.sealpress.com
www.margotleitman.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leitman, Margot,
Gawky: tales of an extra long awkward phase / by Margot Leitman.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-58005-479-9
1. Leitman, Margot. 2. Comedians—United States—Biography. 3. Tall people—Humor. I. Title.
PN2287.L358A3 2013
792.702’8092—dc23
[B]
2012041687
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover and interior design by Domini Dragoone
Distributed by Publishers Group West
For Dan
Thanks for loving me
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Jersey Girls
Chapter 2: A Very Tiny Grown-up
Chapter 3: Oven Door of Sin
Chapter 4: Big Plans to Do Good
Chapter 5: Sticking Your Neck Out
Chapter 6: Leak-Out Pregnancy
Chapter 7: Not Exactly a Horse Girl
Chapter 8: Sneaking Off to Church
Chapter 9: My Orange Unitard
Chapter 10: A Dangerous Camper
Chapter 11: The AIDS Cookie
Chapter 12: Lesbian Shoes and Baby Teeth
Chapter 13: Subsidary Acid Tripper
Chapter 14: Bubble Seduction
Chapter 15: He Looked Like a Man
Chapter 16: My Little Ben Franklin
Chapter 17: Less of a Nerd Than I Thought
Chapter 18: Good Old Maggot
Chapter 19: Losing My Relevé
Epilogue
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Hi, and thanks for buying/borrowing/downloading my book. Seriously. I appreciate it. Now, the stories you are about to read in this book are mostly true comedic portrayals of my youth to the best of my memory. They are written for entertainment purposes and with the kindest of intentions. I’ve tried to keep things as accurate as possible as I remember them. I must point out that I have indulged in a few too many dirty martinis as an adult, which may have affected the way I remember things. Maybe I went to school with you and you remember something differently. That’s fine by me. However, most likely if I went to school with you, you won’t remember any of this stuff anyway because you’ve moved on with your life and are not concerned in the least with my petty tales of growing up too tall.
While I have condensed or rearranged some time-lines for clarity, and created a few composite characters so the reader’s head doesn’t explode keeping track of all the faces from my youth, I’ve done my absolute best to keep things real. I’ve changed names and identifying characteristics of almost everyone in these tales. (Unless, of course, the person asked for his or her real name to be used because they, like me, seek attention wherever they can get it. I understand.) So if you’re reading this book and you think a character is actually you, congrats! You really made an impression! (Or not, maybe it isn’t you. What, do you think the world revolves around you? Come on!)
Lastly, I wasn’t one of those spazzy kids walking around with a recording device at all times (though I did keep extensive cat journals detailing the hardships of being a tall teen in the hopes that I’d one day be discovered for the genius diarist I was). Some dialogue is simulated as to what was probably said in the moment. Also, I’m a comedian. So although these stories are true and this all happened, I have gone for the laugh here and there. Forgive me. It’s my job . . . really, it is. When I fill out forms at the doctor’s office, under “Occupation” I put “Comedian,” so you know I mean business. My hope is that you will laugh at my horrendous teen years and feel better about yours. Okay, I think that’s it. Enjoy the book. I loved writing it a lot more than I loved going through all these changes. And I hope after you read this, whatever rough memories you have of adolescence will be a little funnier in hindsight.
Introduction
I had a regrettable physical condition when I was a child. It was not a debilitating illness or missing limb or anything particularly life threatening, but it was life affecting, sure. I was tall. And I mean, really tall: five foot six midway through fourth grade. Picture a giant, gawky child, a kid in every sense of the word, inhabiting an adult’s body, but unlike in the movie Big, I couldn’t blend in to save my life. There are some tall girls who glide through rooms with elegance, every article of clothing hanging just so on their perfectly proportioned bodies. These are the girls who have thin wrists with dainty bracelets, perfect posture, and a stylish selection of scarves. Then there are the athletic tall girls, the ones whose big feet seem to accent their toned and tan legs. These are the tall girls who look hot while running cross-country and whose naturally pin-straight hair always looks impeccable even after a three-hour volleyball match.
Then, there are the rest of us. Olive Oyl, Mackenzie Phillips, and “Big” Ethel Muggs (Jughead’s tall and ugly stalker from the Archie comic books) all fall into this category. And me. We’re the tall girls who are always tripping over our own feet, who never look normal in any size clothing, and who are constantly screaming “Wo-oah!” as we grab the tablecloth in a desperate attempt to break our fall and take the entire dining room table down with us. Chances are you know one of us, or are one of us, or sympathize with us. We’re a delightful bunch, and have all had our fair share of teasing.
And now, on top of being gigantic in the height category (I eventually capped at five-foot-ten after a half inch more growth after I started college), I am about to have a baby. Because weight-gain-wise I haven’t turned completely into a sweaty hippopotamus, I wishfully and unrealistically assumed that meant the baby was going to be a dainty little six or seven-pounder wearing tiny, clean, white newborn onesies and gliding out into the world in a virtually painless forty-five-minute labor. That was until I went to the doctor the other day. The second the sonogram began, he exclaimed in his former-beach-bum California accent, “Woah . . . this baby’s got a huge head!” Before I could declare my concern that something was wrong, he guided the machine down my belly farther and continued, “Which is directly in proportion to its huuuge body! This is gonna be a big one.”
Of course it’s gonna be a “big one.” How could I have possibly thought, even for just one day, that anything associated with me could be petite? I was in the seven-pound range when I was born, making me “average.” This was the first and last time my size was average. Average is all I have ever wanted to be. By the time I was eighteen months old I was in the ninetieth percentile for height. By age two I was in the ninety-ninth percentile . . . and I stayed there for the next sixteen years.
Look, I’m well aware that there are much worse physical attributes than being tall. And if you’re good at volleyball or basketball, or pretty enough to model, then being a tall girl at a young age is actually an asset! But if you’re like me, uncoordinated and incapable of taking a decent photo, let alone looking anything but gawky while walking, then being tall is just a waste. It’s a gift left unopened on Christmas morning, sitting there collecting dust, only to be shoved in a closet and opened years later by an unappreciative adult who just doesn’t get what is so cool about a hot-pink Tamagotchi.
I compiled this larger story of h
ow I came to grips with my size and all the bumps along the way mostly onstage. A few years ago, my hilarious, accomplished, and articulate friend Jim O’Grady emailed me a few hours before we were both on a storytelling show together. He wrote, “I’m switching to stories about growing up sensitive and artistic in the suburbs of New Jersey. Because that’s never been done before.” He was right. I was telling the same story in different ways over and over again. I couldn’t believe how many separate stories I had about being this gawky teenage girl. But when I compiled them together, it made sense as to how I ended up here. Here: about to give birth to a giant baby, albeit now in Los Angeles instead of the Garden State.
To avoid becoming the size of a full-fledged hippopotamus, I’ve been doing a lot of walking (insert your very own “who walks in L.A.?” joke here). With too-small feet (only a size 8½) to hold up my too-tall body, and now a pregnant belly, I have wiped out publicly countless times. In fact, I wipe out only when I’m in public. The worst is when I get up, exaggeratedly going through all the motions of finding out just what it was that offset my balance. Was it a crack in the sidewalk? A large rock? A fallen branch from a nearby palm tree? No . . . it was nothing. It’s always nothing at all that has made me fall, splattered on the sidewalk with shopkeepers and local customers all gazing out store windows to make sure I haven’t killed my unborn child with my sheer lack of basic balance. The worst that has happened is permanent scarring on my knees from falling in exactly the same way repeatedly. And by the way, I thought I was supposed to get boobs out of this. Isn’t that the exchange? You carry a child for over nine months, feel like crap, gain a bunch of weight, but have huge knockers? Why am I still packing a rack the size of Shelley Duvall’s? Pregnancy is starting to feel a lot like middle school . . . always waiting for boobs.
I’m hoping that if this baby is a boy, he will be thought of as strong and mighty and will be picked first in gym class and will be fought over by admiring girls who want to be his prom date. But if it’s a girl, I fear that she too will have an “extra-long awkward phase” and be forced to be funny to overcompensate for her garish size. We shall soon see.
But for now, let’s get started on some stories of “growing up sensitive and artistic (and may I add tall) in the suburbs of New Jersey.” Away we go.
CHAPTER 1:
The Jersey Girls
At a time when other kids were obsessing over Sweet Valley High books and Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers, and the teen idols were Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, two pop stars who performed in shopping malls, I had a couple of distinct role models of my own: Penny Marshall and Carol Burnett. I too was tall, gawky, and hunched over due to my early-onset scoliosis. When compared with my BFF and business partner, Amanda, I too was the “funny one” (a nice way of saying the “not pretty one”). I’d watched every single Laverne & Shirley and Carol Burnett Show rerun by the time I was eight, sitting on the peach living room carpet I was (and still am) allergic to. I even asked my mom to buy me an M brooch, in the same style of the L that Laverne had sewn onto all her sweaters. I wore it to school every day in hopes of starting a brooch trend, which sadly never caught on. My favorite Laverne & Shirley episode was season 6, episode 113, when Laverne and Shirley finally escape their impending doom of living in Milwaukee and working in Shotz Brewery forever. In this pinnacle turn of events titled “Not Quite New York,” the girls pack up everything they have and move across the country to Hollywood to become movie stars. When the twenty-five minutes were up, my mom was weeping at the end of an era. I however felt invigorated, ready to get cracking on my quest to avoid a boring fate. I was going on to bigger and better things than suburban New Jersey had to offer. You wouldn’t find me working at the local Fotomat on weekdays, bowling with divorced softball coaches on Friday and Saturday nights. I, too, was going to amount to something. I had a hard-core addiction to tall, funny ladies with bad posture and continued to watch these shows religiously in hopes that some of their confidence would rub off on me.
Even though Laverne was hunched over and funny-looking with a wardrobe resembling an old spinster’s, Lenny of Lenny & Squiggy was still so madly in love with her he had to gnaw on his own palm to calm himself down. And Carol Burnett got to kiss all sorts of hot guys, like Harvey Korman and Lyle Waggoner, because she was funny and on TV. Laverne and Carol Burnett were comfortable in their own skins. I was not. There was no way I could rock those pocketed ’70s Bob Mackie pantsuits in the same powerful way that Carol did. Whenever I tried Carol’s trademark tugging-at-the-ear send-off in the mirror, I looked as if I were removing wax buildup. Carol Burnett looked cool . . . I did not.
I grew six inches in fourth grade, ending the year at five-foot-six. Which means I started the year already five feet tall. I was essentially a giant child. In our class picture that year, while all the other kids stood on a riser, I had to stand on the floor in order to be the same height as everyone else, including my teacher.
Towards the beginning of fourth grade I brought in a photo of my family vacation to the Southwest. It was a photo of a huge mountain with my very tall older brother and me looking miniscule standing below it. My father, Bob, a Bronx-born academic, told me it symbolized how small we were in comparison to the hugeness of Earth. I liked it because it was the only photo in which I actually looked tiny. I stood before my class in my first-day-of-school outfit, a hot-pink patterned button-down paired with hot-pink wooden button earrings on my newly pierced ears, and proudly displayed the photograph in its painted gold frame. Pretending I came up with them on my own, I used my father’s words to explain to the class, “So as you can see, me and my brother are, like, really small in comparison to the hugeness that is Earth. Any questions?”
Carl, a newcomer to the class, raised his hand. “Um, this is more of a comment, but it’s impossible for you to look small. I mean even next to a mountain, you’re still the tallest girl in the class. In the whole school, I think, as far as I can see.” Humiliated, I looked at my mousy teacher for support. She smiled back at me in a way that I could tell was insincere because her eyes were frowning. She was probably exhausted from mal-nourishment. If I had to hear one more time about how she had recently lost sixty pounds, I was going to fake a “family emergency” and leave school early that day. All I ever saw her eat was sugar-free cookies hidden in her desk drawer. She didn’t care that someone was embarrassing me. She was dreaming of Boston creams. She looked at me as if to say, You’re huge, Margot, what do you want me to do about it? Those are the facts. Have I told you I recently lost sixty pounds?
That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the year. I realized I would have to accept forever being the type of girl on the lower half of a chicken fight. I certainly wasn’t ever going to get a piggyback ride from any of my friends’ dads; that option expired around age five. I would have loved to have been petite and cute like Paula Abdul, spending my time tap-dancing beside a cartoon cat or telling the world I was “Forever Your Girl.” But that wasn’t the path my family’s genetics had mapped out for me. I was on my way to being a woman, albeit about eight years too early. So knowing that I was certainly not “Forever Your Girl,” or even forever a girl, I decided to make the best of it.
Before my growth spurt I really excelled at gymnastics. Not in an uneven-bars, backbend-on-a-balance-beam kind of way, but in a double-jointed, can-put-my-legs-behind-my-head-easily-to-make-a-human-pretzeland-impress-kids-before-class kind of way. My extra-bendy body made me a real force to be reckoned with on the extra-bouncy gymnasium floor. After I reached the size of an above-average grown woman by age eleven, my future as a gymnast was clearly about as realistic as my future as a horse jockey. Then I became useless in P.E. class, picked last every time even though one would think I was the strongest. Somehow my long legs that bent backward like a flamingo’s made me run more slowly than the short, chubby kids always chosen before me. Plus the lack of left-handed equipment—you’d think the school could invest in just one left-handed baseball glove—made me
a real train wreck out on the field.
No matter where I was, some grown-up would always make me feel as if I were doing something wrong just by existing in this body. I was once removed from the monkey bars by a middle-aged recess monitor with a big butt who told me that my shirt rode up too much and boys would get the wrong idea. It wasn’t my fault my extremely long and rapidly growing torso made it impossible for my shirts to fit me properly for longer than a month. And believe me, the boys weren’t getting the wrong idea; they were all a foot shorter than I and terrified of my Lee Relaxed Fit Extra-Long Riders. At this point I wasn’t quite sure what “the wrong idea” even meant. To me, the “wrong idea” was to accuse a little kid of trying to seduce a playground of prepubescent boys just by existing in her body. It seemed that many adults were uncomfortable with a girl my size playing with all the other kids who still could be described as “cute.” Just because I was growing at a faster rate did not mean that I was now a sex-crazed teenager. I was still a kid, but the adults projected early sexualization on me, as they couldn’t wrap their heads around how else to treat this girl/lady they were encountering.
My band teacher, Mr. Fervor, was one of the worst. He treated me differently than my BFF Amanda, who was allowed to share a chair with him when assigned the coveted job of sheet-music-page-turner. When it was my turn, I squeezed myself down next to Mr. Fervor and he quickly got up. “Uhh, hey, Margot, hey, uhh, I think you should pull up your own chair. I don’t want any of the kids here to think the wrong thing.” Again with the wrong thing? I was humiliated. Did Mr. Fervor actually think my fourth-grade classmates would suspect us of having an affair? Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Fervor. At that age, Fred Savage was more my type.
Meanwhile I was taller than my teacher and was held to a more mature standard than my smaller classmates. If they cried in class over teasing or a grade, they were just kids being kids, and were sympathized with accordingly. If I cried, I looked like a blubbering grown woman in a homemade skirt set.
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