That Spanish teacher was so broken, she was so done with life, so it was chaos. She looked like Newman from Seinfeld, so everyone called her Newman. They would call her Ms. Newman and she would respond to it. I mean, it was bad.
Then that December our principal made this big announcement that no more gambling was allowed in the hallways. Because people played dice in the hallways and stuff. The Asian kids would have break-dance competitions in between classes. I actually started doing this thing where I got really good at making it look like I was about to start break dancing. Actually, I was just trying to get through the hallway, but I would get in the middle of this big circle and it would be my turn and I would start moving around to music and pumping my shirt and making it look like I was about to dance. I would just do it until they realized I was never going to start break dancing. I would go for like two minutes without actually doing any dancing before they pushed me out of the circle.
Anyway, back to the story. Our principal, she instituted this no gambling policy. I saw an opportunity and I went up to these kids in the back of my class and I was like, “I can teach you a gambling game that you’ll never get in trouble for playing if you just stop choking me.” It was a clear negotiation. They thought about it, and the next day I taught them how to play dreidel for money.
For a good month, outside my Spanish class, you would walk by and see these black kids in Avirex jackets, huddled over a top. Just like, “Yo, that’s a ‘W’ motherfucker, pay up.”
ALLIE BROSH—WRITER, ILLUSTRATOR
I was never a cool kid. They made an attempt to, like, maybe I could be in that group, but I was too scared.
Marc
They reached out? They sent a representative?
Allie
They reached out and I was too scared. I was always an awkward kid. I was always behind, never knew what to do with myself, or how to be. My best friend, this kid named Joey. He was a cool kid and I never was. I always felt very intimidated by him. Much of my early life was defined by trying to get him to think that I was cool. He would give me advice on how to dress. I spent my early preteen years wearing jeans and baggy shirts—totally rocking the skater-guy look.
I didn’t fit in to anybody but him. He didn’t know what he was doing either. To me, he looked like he knew what he was doing.
I was like the tumor on his life. He found this group of cool friends, and I wasn’t meshing with the cool friends. They could just tell. Cool kids have this sense where they just know that you aren’t one of them, right? It also didn’t help that about three months earlier, my friend Joey had dared me to shave my head.
I did that because he dared me to and I didn’t want to look like I was chicken.
Marc
Oh, no! People who don’t know who they are can’t shave their heads!
Allie
Yeah, exactly! I didn’t know who I was.
Marc
I did that.
Allie
It was really bad timing. It was about two weeks before I discovered that I’m interested in boys. I had no view of self before this—no self-consciousness, nothing. Then, I shaved my head and I discovered, “Wow! I am not pretty!” I had giant braces. When you do something like that—when you do something that’s so obviously—it just shows that you don’t know how to do the things that show people you can be one of them. They see you and they’re like, “There’s something wrong here.”
MARIA BAMFORD
My dad sent me to a Dale Carnegie training course on How to Win Friends & Influence People. For eighteen weeks I went with some businessmen and women, and it saved me. I was super depressed. I was sleeping all day through school. I took the course and suddenly I was able to have friendships.
I just had a format of how to talk to people. Because I had so much anxiety. So after taking the course, I would say, “Hi, Marc. Marc, it’s really great to see you. You know, Marc, your set was so great last night, Marc. I really mean that.”
Then you listen to people and then you tell the person back what they just said, but with a positive spin on it. It was fantastic, I tell you. Like, immediate results.
Then it all crashed down when I went to college, and people on the East Coast were like, “Why are you talking like that to me? Just calm down.” I think there was an air of hysteria with my Dale Carnegie techniques in college because I was very afraid, so I’m sure they were telling me to calm down for a good reason.
GILLIAN JACOBS—ACTOR
My interests were always very different from what other kids my age were into, so I think that we didn’t really have a lot to talk about, and the more they didn’t understand me, the louder I talked about what I was into, so they just didn’t know what to make of me.
My mom would only let me buy clothes that she approved of, so I wore a lot of sweater sets in high school because she liked sweater sets. I remember going to an outlet store and wanting to buy a skirt. It was not a revealing skirt, it was a floor-length skirt, but my mom was like, “I don’t like it. The material looks cheap.” She wouldn’t let me buy it. I was dressed like a middle-aged woman.
AMAZING JOHNATHAN—COMEDIAN, MAGICIAN
I used to be able to bend spoons. I figured out how to bend a spoon using my mind. It was just misdirection. I would make them look away for a second and I would bend it.
I did it really well, and I did it for my physics teacher, who I really admired. He said to me, “Is that real? Are you really doing this or is it a trick?” I was really unpopular in school. I was not standing out at all. I lied and I said, “Yeah, I can really do it,” thinking that would be the end of it.
Nah.
The next hour, I’m sitting in class, and I hear on the speaker, “John Szeles, please come to the principal.” Shit, this has something to do with the spoon bending, I know it does.
I walk in there, there’s my mom and my dad. They were called out of work. A bunch of spoons on the desk and a local reporter. I’m like, “Fuck. This is not good.”
They wanted me to demonstrate my powers. My mom took me aside and said, “Can you really do this, or are you just lying?” I looked her straight in the eye, and I said, “I can really do this.” It’s like a snowball going downhill. I said, “I can really do it.” I proceeded to bend all the spoons and they freaked out. I bent everything.