Allie Brosh - Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

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Touchstone

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New York, NY 10020

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Copyright 2013 by Alexandra Brosh

Portions of this book have been previously published on the authors blog.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone paperback edition November 2013

TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Designed by Ruth Lee-Mui

Jacket Design and Illustrations by Allie Brosh

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brosh, Allie.

Hyperbole and a half : unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened / Allie Brosh.

pages cm

A Touchstone book.

1. Brosh, Allie. 2. ComediansUnited StatesBiography. 3. Conduct of lifeHumor. I. Title.

PN2287.B6955A3 2013

792.7028092dc23

[B]

2013025527

ISBN 978-1-4516-6617-5

ISBN 978-1-4516-6618-2 (ebook)

For Scott.

What now, fucker?

Also for Mom, Dad, Kaiti, Laurie, Duncan, Sarah, Joey, and Lee. Youre all great.

It seems like there should be some sort of introduction to this.

Here is a re-creation of a drawing I did when I was five:

Its a guy with one normal arm and one absurdly fucking squiggly arm. If you look really closely, you can see the normal arm under the squiggly one. What you cant see is that in the original, the squiggly arm continues for the entire length of a roll of butcher paper. It started on one end and then just kept going until I ran out of paper.

I remember drawing it and thinking, This is insane... I cant even believe how long this guys arm is. If I had not run out of paper, who knows what would have happened.

In its entirety, the arm takes up more paper than this book. Theoretically, I could have cut the roll of butcher paper into squares, stapled them together, and created Squiggly Arm Book.

I didnt, though.

I considered that possibility, but, in the end, I decided I couldnt realistically expect to get away with it.

When I was ten years old, I wrote a letter to my future self and buried it in my backyard. Seventeen years later, I remembered that I was supposed to remember to dig it up two years earlier.

I looked forward to getting a nostalgic glimpse into my childhoodperhaps I would marvel at my own innocence or see the first glimmer of my current aspirations. As it turns out, it just made me feel real weird about myself.

The letter was scrawled in green crayon on the back of a utility bill. My ten-year-old self had obviously not spent much time planning out the presentation of it. Most likely, I had simply been walking through the kitchen and suddenly realized that it was entirely possible to write a letter to my future self.

The overwhelming excitement of this realization probably caused me to panic and short-circuit, making me unable to locate proper writing implements. There was no time for that kind of thing.

I did, however, manage to fight through the haze of chaos and impulse long enough to find a crayon stub and a paper surface to mash it against.

The letter begins thusly:

Dear 25 year old [note: not Dear 25-year-old me or Dear 25-year-old self, just Dear 25 year old],

Do you still like dogs? What is your favarite dog? Do you have a job tranning dogs? Is Murphy still alive? What is youre favarite food?? Are mom and dad still alive?

I feel its important to note the order of those questions. Obviously, dog-related subjects were my chief concern (Murphy was my familys dog), followed closely by the need to know my future favorite food (I feel that the double question marks speak to how important I thought that question was). Only then did I pause to wonder whether my parents had survived.

The letter continues with a section titled About me:

My name is Allie and I am ten years old. I have blound hair and blue eyes. My favarite dog is a german shepard. My second favarite dog is a husky. My third favarite dog is a Dobberman Pincher.

This is troubling for a number of reasons, the first of which is that I apparently thought my future self wouldnt be aware of my name or eye color.