Gabe Johnson Takes Over (19 page)

A.

Nobody laughed at my jokes except for Gus, who is my best friend. He thinks I'm hilarious, of course, but he's been my best friend forever, so he's biased. My so-called second best friend, Peter Yang? He never laughed at anything. What funny man would hang out with a dude who never laughs?

B.

In seventh grade, I did the school talent show, and I ripped a routine right square out of my
Jerry Seinfeld Live on Broadway: I'm Telling You for the Last Time
DVD and nobody laughed. Jerry Seinfeld is hilarious. He's a comic genius. Everybody laughs at him. I did his shtick, and I got nothing except for Ben Schilling shouting at me to get off the stage (yes, he got detention) and also a couple of other kids booing. That means the bearer of the jokes wasn't funny (I was the bearer, if you didn't get that).

C.

When I talked, I often talked way too fast, sometimes so fast I even annoyed myself (not to mention others), especially when I talked too fast in my head, which, for most of my life, I have done 24/7, which is not funny. This can still be a problem.
Shut up, voice in head
. Not funny! Not funny! Seriously, not funny.

• • •

Let us address some larger issues, shall we?

My dad must be part of this discussion:

I used to think about my dad a lot. I used to think he was with me wherever I went, and that made me feel good. I used to ask him for help and ask him to keep me safe, which is weird. He's dead. I thought a ghost was keeping an eye on me.

Aha! When I was eleven, it occurred to me that he killed himself (I found him when I was five), so he obviously didn't want to be with me at all because he made sure he'd never see me again no matter what, so I stopped kidding myself that my dad's ghost was hanging around taking care of me. Hanging around is a bad way to put it.

Ha-ha.

See? None of that's funny.

• • •

Let's address the bonfire.

There really aren't any pictures of Dad left because when I was seven, Jerri had this giant bonfire to help me and Andrew “let go of the past.” We listened to Celtic music and burned Dad's books and shirts and photo albums, etc. Just about everything. (Not totally everything.)

You can't burn memories, Jerri. I guess you know that now.

I have some memories.

Here's a memory:

One time, when I was maybe four, Dad put me in our old Volvo station wagon (a car Jerri got rid of around the time of the bonfire, even though I screamed “Noooo!”) and drove us out to the big Mound east of town (an important Mound). I sat down at the bottom while Dad jogged up and down it, which doesn't make a lot of sense given what I knew about Dad from Jerri (a short, fat dad). He jogged, and I played in the dirt or whatever, and he jogged, and I remember shouting at him, “Daddy! Daddy!” etc., and he jogged. When he stopped, he was all sweaty, and he walked over to me and whispered, “That's better. That's better.” Then he said, “What the hell are you doing, Felton?” I believe I was eating a rock. I remember the Volvo smelled funny on the drive back because he was so sweaty. Not exactly like Cody Frederick funny but sort of. When we got home, Dad said, “Thanks for accompanying me, buddy.” That was nice.

I really loved that car—it was freaking huge—but Jerri said it had bad vibes. So it went away like all Dad's pictures.

I do have some memories though. Not funny ones.

• • •

Let's delve into Jerri a bit!

While I was home from school sweating and not eating after my Regionals screw-up, Jerri, between her crossing guard shifts, often stood at the landing of the stairs that lead into the basement, where my room is and where I watch TV. She would stand there and watch me sleeping. Except, I wasn't asleep. I was watching Comedy Central. I would pretend to sleep when I'd hear her creep down the stairs so I wouldn't have to talk to her (as she had taken to saying very weird things, very incomprehensible things that my brain did not understand). I'd squint my eyes so they looked closed, but they were open just enough to continue watching Comedy Central. Sometimes, she'd stand there looking at me for a whole episode of
MADtv
, and I'd get uncomfortable and want to move, but I didn't because her freakiness was freaking me out. Sometimes, I could hear her swallowing, like she was crying or something, which was totally weird. I got disqualified from a stupid track meet, for God's sake. I was pretty upset, but it wasn't so tragic that my mom should've been crying about it.

You know what? Of course she wasn't crying about the track meet. I was just a dumb kid back in May.

One day, she stood there for like an hour, swallowing and staring, and it just got to be too much. I had an itch on my leg and couldn't hold on anymore, so I said, “Can I help you, Jerri?”

She flinched and said, “No…just checking on you.”

“Okay!” I said.

“I don't think it's bad to be in sports, Felton.”

Why the hell would it be? Incomprehensible!

Then she went upstairs.

Incomprehensible jokes aren't funny, by the way.

• • •

And, finally, let's address Bluffton.

Disclaimer: Jerri says I shouldn't say “retard” all the time because it's disrespectful to people who have really low IQs, but that's not what I'm talking about, you know? I sincerely apologize to anyone I offend by saying “retard.”
Okay: There have been times when I truly feel like I'm a retard and that everybody thinks I'm retarded, and because they think I'm retarded, I get nervous and I act like a retard, which simply fulfills their expectations. It's a big circle. The retarded circle of my life.

Am I retarded? Well…

I am a Reinstein. I live on the outskirts of a small town in southwestern Wisconsin on ten acres from which I can see the town's little country club and golf course—which I've called ugly. From my home, I can also see all the alcoholic, blithering golf dads who swear and scream.

I blamed my dad for this situation, for abandoning us here by hanging himself in the garage. And I also blamed Jerri because she's from here and should've known better. I believe Bluffton, Wisconsin, is a terrible place.

On good days, this is what I've thought: I'm not retarded. Bluffton is retarded. It has a dumb little college, which is why my dad came here (to teach). Mostly all the students at the dumb little college are dumb, and they think they're king shit or whatever because they're drunk and walking around shouting and in college. Other than the college, Bluffton has a dumb main street, where kids my age stand around staring at each other, or, if they're old enough and have access to a car, they drive up and down the street, staring at the dumb kids staring at each other. Sometimes, they drive to Walmart, which is really big. Bluffton also has a McDonald's and a Subway and a Pizza Hut and a combo KFC–Taco Bell. (KenTacoFrickinBell—retarded.) And there are lots of hills and lots of farms outside the city limits and lots of farmers who drive their pickup trucks and smell like poop and lots of black and white cows standing on the hills staring at you like you're a retard or like you're a kid on main street.

And listen to this: I never even minded cows. I never minded poop-smelling farmers, even though they can be mean and gross (they blow snot out of their noses onto the snow). Farmers and their poop-smelling kids are not why Bluffton has seemed retarded and why me and my friends have called it Suckville.

Me, Peter, and Gus (my only friends forever) figured the facts out in eighth grade. The reason we wanted to rename Bluffton
Suckville
is because of the town kids: the public school teachers' kids and the lawyers' kids and the doctors' kids and the cops' kids and the insurance salespeople's and the bankers' kids and the orthodontist's daughter, Abby Sauter, who has been very mean.

“They're all dumb and annoying!” we shouted. “They're the retarded ones!” we said. They honestly do think they're the special children of God. Gus calls these kids honkies. I don't know why, but it makes me laugh. Even now. Honkies.

We aren't honkies (maybe I am). Me, Peter, and Gus are college kids (that is, kids of college professors).

At least, I used to be.

We are a minority! We are oppressed!

At least, I used to be. I'm crazy.

Gus and I tried to write a horror movie script last year titled
The Retarded Honkies of Suckville!
We wrote two pages actually. Gus wrote some good jokes.

I didn't write any jokes because I wasn't funny.

Gus is hilarious. Gus could be a great standup comic right now, even though he doesn't want to be. He's really small, and he's got this wad of black hair that's always sort of long, and he ducks his head so his bangs cover his eyes so he can hide the fact that he thinks everybody is just dumb. I know he's under his hair rolling his eyes and making faces. Everybody else knows too. He used to drive the junior and senior honkies crazy because they knew he was making fun of them, but they couldn't catch him because his hair wad was in front of his eyes. He's so dang funny, hugely hilarious, which is the greatest compliment I can give anybody.

He also left for the summer, which threatened to make Bluffton double Suckville, maybe triple Suckville, as I wasn't exactly in love with Peter Yang, who was my remaining friend.

Not funny. Not funny. Not funny.

A comedian? I don't think so.

• • •

It's 1:20 a.m. I am not sleepy.

Thank you for reading
!

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Growing up, Geoff Herbach was both dork and jock. Sports calmed him. People caused him anxiety. Offseason, Geoff was prone to kummerspeck, which is a German word meaning weight gain due to nervous eating. Its literal translation is grief bacon. Geoff teaches writing at Minnesota State, Mankato. Visit him at
geoffherbach.com
.