TEAM LAST CALL

So when an invitation for my 10-year high school reunion showed up in the mail last week, I wasn’t exactly eager to revisit that phase of my life, a period that exists in my memory now as one dark blur of wet willies, red bellies, purple nurples, and my personal favorite, the atomic wedgie.

High school for me was one big game of Smear the Queer, and I was “it.” As an undersized marching band geek and an alleged pissypants, my function within the school was non-negotiable: I was a moving target. A small, dumpling-shaped target with orthopedic shoe inserts, headgear and a hairstyle that only Olympic gymnast Paul Hamm is brave enough to rock in the new millennium.

My entire existence in high school was dependent on speed. When the bell rang to signify the end of class, I would shoot out the door and scamper down the hall like a greased piglet, squealing, snorting and madly weaving in and out of my classmates’ legs to avoid the clutches of the varsity football team.

Sometimes, when the wind was to my back, I would make it to my next class; most of the time … not so much.

When I wasn’t busy riding around inside the football captain’s trunk or hanging from the flagpole by my underwear, I enjoyed such pastimes as hiding under my desk, shrieking like a schoolgirl and running for my life. On a good day, I went home in the same pair of pants I put on that morning.

Altogether, high school was a harrowing experience, complete with drama, intrigue and the perpetual nightmare of being picked for the skins team in gym class. I was miserable, frightened and paranoid, like a little Republican in husky jeans and hi-tops. I still pee my pants a little every time I think about it.

I’m exaggerating about the whole situation, of course. It wasn’t really as bad as I’m making it sound. I had braces, not headgear.

Everything else is true, though, including the pissypants rumors, although at the time I denied it like Bill O’Reilly caught rubbing up against a female intern.

The pissypants story actually dates back to the fourth grade. I was in the “gifted class” in school, which means that while the rest of my peers were in math class learning to add and subtract with fractions, I was busy writing poems about bunnies and learning how to crochet sweaters – invaluable skills that have come in handy ... well … I’m sure they will at some point.

Consequently, when our class sat down to take our year-end math tests, I was about as likely to get an A as George Bush is to win a geography bee. It was as painful and hopeless to watch as Anna Nicole Smith trying to tie her own shoelaces.

So while the other fourth grade kids were busy calculating the square root of pi, I was in my seat reacting in the only way I knew how: by emptying 4/7 of my bladder into 5/6 of my pants, resulting in 9/10 of my classmates making fun of me for the rest of my academic career.

They say there are two types of people in this world: those who were born to be made fun of (Hummer drivers, Anna Nicole Smith, anyone who’s used the term “freedom fries” with a straight face), and those who were born to make fun of others (all the kids in my high school).

It became painfully clear to me during my school years that I was and always would be one of the to-be-made-fun-ofs. And I’m not even a Republican. There’s just something about me – the way I talk or the way I dress or the way I look like the love child of George Costanza and Frodo Baggins – that makes people want to pick me up and stuff me in a locker. Which frankly makes it really hard to get any work done around the office.
Once a hapless nerdling, always a hapless nerdling.

It probably goes without saying that I’m not really anxious to relive the nuclear winter that was my high school experience, especially not for $75 a plate at my reunion. Unless there was some guarantee that my old bullies would show up all bald and fat with ugly wives and terrible children.

But even then, I’m not sure I’d go. I have enough trouble maintaining my dignity without being pantsed in the buffet line by a group of 30-year-old pizza delivery boys, or whatever it is my bullies do now. I can’t really risk another blow to my self-esteem, which remains low despite the fact that I’m a total cutey-patootey with the body of a Greek god, a wildly popular column and the best rock band on the planet. Or at least that’s what I wrote down for my bio in the reunion program.

So to my high school reunion committee I have to say thanks, but no thanks. Regretfully, I am unable to attend your evening of fun and nostalgia.

Time may heal all, but it can’t pick an atomic wedgie.