Hofstetter - Ginger kid: mostly true tales from a former nerd

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4197-2870-9
eISBN 978-1-68335-262-4

Text copyright 2018 Steve Hofstetter
Book design by Alyssa Nassner

Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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TO JACOB, MASON, OZZIE, RANDY, AND REBECCA.

WITHOUT YOU, THIS WOULD HAVE GONE VERY DIFFERENTLY.

Opener, Feature, Headliner. A typical American comedy show is divided up into those three acts, in that order.

The Opener is so raw and in over their head that, no matter how much promise they may have, theyre often completely lost.

The Feature finally has the experience and knowledge to advance past being the opener, but their desperation to become the headliner can lead to failure.

The Headliner, however, takes the failures theyve lived through during their earlier stages and uses those lessons to develop the quiet confidence that comes from finally understanding the game.

That, in essence, describes my high school journey.

Opener, Feature, Headliner.

Hi. Maybe youre reading this because you have good taste in books; or someone you know has good taste in books; or someone who threw this out used to have good taste in books, before they became a jerk. No matter the reason, hi.

I dont know exactly why youre reading this book, but I know exactly why Im writing it. Ive gotten to do some pretty cool things in my life. Im a stand-up comedian, and I perform a few hundred shows a year. More than one hundred million people have watched me on YouTube. Ive been in some movies and even hosted my own TV show. And Im writing this while on a plane to New Zealand. Dont worryI didnt just mail myself there. Im actually going for a show. Life has been good.

But if you had predicted any of this when I was in high school, I wouldnt have believed you. Partially because Id have been wary of the sorcery you used to glimpse the future. But mainly because for me, life in high school was not good. I was a scared, shy redhead from Queens who spent way more time getting made fun of than being funny. The only way Id have believed I was going to New Zealand by myself is if one of the bullies mailed me there.

As I got older, I learned that most of us get bullied. Most of us get scared. And most of us have never been to New Zealand by ourselves. Except people from New Zealand; theyve pretty much all been there at some point. I hear its super-nice. Maybe Ill let you know in the next book.

The exact reason Im writing this book is because I wanted to share my story in the hope that you can see it as your own. Spoiler alert: My story comes out okay in the end. Im hoping that yours does, too.

I was a pretty happy kid. And then, I wasnt.

Baseball is not an easy sport to play one-on-one, but my brother, David, and I improvised. We would walk the block to our schoolyard, and one of us would play outfield while the other hit fly balls. Our lives would probably have been easier if we preferred basketball. But we wanted to be baseball players, so we played baseball.

Meanwhile, my sister Beth and I would spend most nights dreaming up crazy stories about what our future lives would look like. Sometimes she was a doctor and I was a lawyer. More often, I was a baseball player and she was an actress. Every time, we were both rich and not living in a three-bedroom house with six people. And, every time, we would laugh.

But I was at my happiest when I was in school.

I know that sounds strange. What normal kid is happy in school? Dont misunderstand: I looked forward to dismissal and the weekend and summer vacation like everyone else. But when I was a kid, school was good to me. Because school was easy.

The first thing that made school easy was the familiarity. Im the youngest of four and from Briarwood, a neighborhood in Queens where teachers work at the same school so long, its like theyre serving time.

I imagine a judge pounding a gavel in front of a roomful of graying, chalk-covered middle-agers. You are hereby sentenced to twenty-five years of glitter-covered hand turkeys, hed shout, jowls trembling. The teachers would then shuffle back to their respective faculty lounges, where theyd be met with a lifetime supply of instant coffee and rexo sheets and debate whether or not this was better than picking up trash off a highway.

All my teachers had taught three Hofstetters before me, so I often started the school year being given some sort of in-front-of-the-class responsibility like passing out reading materials or helping pronounce students names. I accepted with an artificial air of reluctance, thereby not losing my street cred while simultaneously exuding authority.

Meanwhile, my sister Beth was just one year older than I. So when I was in fifth grade, I knew the sixth graders and they knew me. That cemented my street cred. There is no greater grade school validation than an older kid saying hello to you in the hallway and meaning it.

Something important to know about where I grew up is that Queens is the most diverse county in the country, and Briarwood is the most diverse neighborhood in Queens. There were always twenty to thirty kids who would start the year unable to speak more than a few sentences of English. My closest friends names were Anant, Jung-Hoon, and Chao. We were a real-life Disney Channel show, except we never formed a band.

Because of the number of students who didnt speak English, school was easy academically. I had an unfair advantage when it came to homework: The school taught toward the students having the most trouble, so those of us who could speak English natively were rarely pushed. The most academically challenging thing we had to do was trace our hands to draw a turkey.

To make school even easier, my siblings were older, and they judged me according to their contemporaries. Sure, some of their classmates were idiotsa boy in Beths class once interrupted the sex ed presentation to announce hed do whatever he could to avoid getting his periodbut my siblings were smart and their friends were smart, and they demanded the same of me. I was already learning long division in the second grade because David would think I was an idiot if I didnt.

The first time I understood my advantages, I was eleven years old. One of the new teachers aides was being led around the class by a student named Pampas (really, there were very few kids named Mike or Sarah anywhere near that school), and Pampas stopped when she got to my desk.

This is Steve, Pampas said. Hes the smartest kid in the school. Because Pampas was named for a heavily populated region in South America, I trusted her opinion.