Bildungsroman

Pre-adolescent "awkward age," my ass. We all went through junior high, so maybe it would be nice if we could all pick up the simple lesson that it might not be half as awkward if the education specialists and the developmental psychologists and the superintendant and board of education could just keep their damn mouths shut and quit making the generalizations. True, some of us struggled through an awkward phase in junior high — and it seems like some of us, ahem, haven't quite outgrown it yet — but the junior high I remember was a second home to the R.J. Milligans and Cara Bristols of Scotch Plains and Fanwood, too. The more urbane end of the awkward spectrum.

I spent lunchtime in middle school vacillating between two tables at the far end of the cafeteria, first sitting with the band-and-comic-book nerds and then sitting with my posse — my six classmates who were (are) even less socially adroit than I was (am). God, I hope they're still clumsy enough to make me look like Mr. Big. I don't need Josh Hamerman showing me up at our high school reunion.

The point is, when do I get to hit my stride? When does the fucking acne subside and the voice not squeak out when I try to get someone's attention? Every now and then, NASA makes some amazing discovery about space, and a spokes-weenie gets on television with his thick Drew Carey-glasses and his anodized astronaut pen sticking out of his shirt pocket and starts going into a wanking frenzy about pulsars and moon rocks. Science geek I am, yet not even a NASA-discovers-bacteria-on-Mars breakthrough can lift me from the funk washing over me when I see myself reflected in this middle aged dorkwad on the TV. No booze, no pot, no clubs, no sports — and it's all cool with me save for the fact that it ain't cool with anyone else.

And that's what I think this whole damn awkward age bullshit is about, and why, in a future life, I dream of coming back as a masked figure who bitch-slaps every uptight mother in the world who won't let her daughter wear lipstick and every dad who thinks MTV is a bad influence. (Don't worry, in a different life, I'll be a masked avenger who dishes out beatdowns to parents that can't control their bastard kids.) My co-collaborator Allison tells her lost and wandering college freshmen to "just be yourself," that's how you'll fit in and make friends. Wrong, wrong, wrong — it's like the seeing leading the seeing. I mean, how 'bout if "yourself" is a total asshole? Just be yourself? Sure, being an asshole never stopped anyone from getting ahead.... But what if you're just a pathetic loser? Then what are you supposed to do?

I'll tell you what to do, and this is why you should buy my soon-to-be-written book instead of Allison's: lose your inhibitions and be the person everyone else wants you to be. No, I don't mean invisible. I mean shamelessly entertaining, uplifting and encouraging and agreeable. Like half Tony Robbins, half Kelly Ripa, with just a pinch of the "Queer Eye" fashion guy thrown in for good measure.