Intro to Dweeb Girl

Question: What happens when Dan Arnold mates with a cross between Virgin Mary and Cybil?

            Answer: Me. Dweeb Girl.

            I swore I was adopted until the age of 21. Correction: I wished I was adopted. If I was adopted, I’d finally be able to make some sense of who I was and how I got placed with these people more often referred to as my parents. And, it’d explain how I wound up with three brothers �" each as different from me as planets humming around different solar spheres.

            Being adopted would have been too easy. We dweebs don’t do things the easy way. Instead, we take the long way home �" often stumbling and fumbling into our “uniqueness” and, finally sense of self (otherwise known as sweeeeeet revenge).

            But I wasn’t adopted. Instead, according to my mother, I was conceived by the very people who raised me on Dec. 10, 1973 on an olive green 1970s curtain upholstery patterned couch. I hate olive green. She knows this, she insists, because she had a cold sore on her lip the week before and had held off on sex until the glorious day of ovulation. Mom, to this day, has never really understood the term Too Much Information.

            Regardless, nine months later, I came wailing into the world as the oldest of what would one day become a clan of rowdy boys; complete with a pacifist libertarian, a narcissistic attorney, and a pot smoking teddy bear. Basically, it was to become the typical American family �" with a few extra mouths and personalities thrown in to keep Thanksgiving dinners more interesting.

            I’m quite surprised I wasn’t born with the coke bottle glasses and white girl afro that I’ve carried with me for as long as I can remember. Also missing was my soon-to-be giraffe like stature and zits that have carried me well into my 30s. Instead, I came out the sweet blonde with peach fuzz features and all the potential in the world to be something beautiful. I lay in my warming bed wide-eyed and full of promise. I can just hear my parents thinking it, “She’s perfect.”

            The horror they must have felt when that little girl grew up refusing to wear dresses, hating anything made of lace, and covering her mocha brown eyes with coke bottle glasses that not only magnified them, but made them look like something out of Alien. Perfection was not in the cards by grade four, when that little girl was sporting an afro that rivaled Buckwheat’s and a neck that begged classmates to nickname her “the pencil-necked geek.”

            When your mother is the stay home version of Laura Bush, who insists until you’re 20 years old that she was a virgin on her wedding night, it’s pretty easy to break the perfect mold. You can’t imagine doing anything that might disappoint the hazel eyed Madonna raising you. And imagine the confusion when the good natured Laura comes down with bi weekly fits of extreme PMS that leave her screaming over crumbs on a counter �" something later attributed to bi-polar disorder. I don’t know what perfect looks like, but I do know that picture perfect it was not. And I blamed it on myself.

            The thing about dweebs, and probably what makes us the dweebiest (dweebs are entitled to invent words to describe their inner dork hood) is that we don’t have a lot of self-esteem. We generally don’t know whether we’re coming or going; something that lends greatly to our awkward social nature. For me, this started with not knowing whether I’d be met after school with snacks and kisses or a punishment for something I’d unknowingly done “wrong” three weeks ago. Offenses could range from misdemeanors like leaving clothes on the bathroom floor and generally not appreciating Mom’s housekeeping efforts to felonies like hiding bad spelling tests under my bed. Punishments were always the same; weeding the garden, piling logs for the wood stove, and dishes. But all were preluded by hour long screaming fits by Mom and weak promises that I’d try harder. There was no jury trial. There was never a defense. If Mom said I was guilty, I was. I knew better than to fight her on it. I couldn’t afford Barbie dolls, let alone a defense attorney anyway. I spent my childhood tip toeing around being in and out of trouble at home and in school, even as an honor roll student who lived to please the adults in my life.

            But adults and their visions of me as less than perfect were really the least of my problems. Real problems came with bullies at school. I spent many days on the bus listening to dozens of neighbors sing, “Here comes Erin, floatin’ down the Delaware, chewin’ on her underwear, can’t afford another pair…” and other top hits like “Fro girl, fro girl, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you” (as sung to the tune of “Bad Boys” by Inner Circle �" go ahead, hum along).

            I sat on the school bus, wedged between the window and the bully of the day, with my eyes closed tight pretending I was someone �" anyone �" but me. And when you spend that much time pretending, you tend to develop a hell of an imagination. In my fantasies, I was Ramona �" a character from my favorite book series �" with a big sister who protected me. Other times, I was Pippi Longstockings; out on adventures with my grandfather and pet monkey. At home, I ran to my books to read more about these girls and their lives. And there, between the chapters, was born the perfect dweeb girl. The beauty of growing up with your nose stuck between the pages of adventure books, is that at some point, you come up for air. As all great protagonist dweebs do, I eventually decided it was time to make some adventures of my own…

           

Reviews

[Erin Lee]

Thanks, Mark. You're a sweetheart! I think people get intimidated by lengthy prose vrs poetry. Glad u were my first. ;-)

[Mark]

As a dweeb even before the word existed, i can wholly identify with this well-told tale. You express yourself with the wry cynicism that we use so adroitly to camouflage our pain and confusion. Hard to believe that in two months this hasn't garnered a pile of reviews; proud to be the first!
Two minor notes: Pippi Longstocking has no "s", but "Sybil" needs one. FYI.