The Story of Me

My lot in life had pretty much been established by the time I had finished junior high.  Between romantic rejection, verbal abuse and assorted other embarrassments, there remained little time for any reasonable form of social life.  As a consequence, I became a career dweeb.  I was quite good at it, too, being a dweeb, I mean, and my disreputation, as you might say, grew accordingly.  I was the King Lear of dweebs, and proud of it.  but even stranger, be it possible, is the fact that it worked for me, and I enjoyed it, being a dweeb and all.  I guess I thought that being a nobody was better than being no one at all.  At least that’s what I thought I thought.
     All that changed, however, the day she walked into my life, or my classroom, at least.  It was the classic tale of the hopeless romantic, with an emphasis on hopeless.
     The more I watched her, the more I wanted to love her, the more I wanted her to love me.  I determined that afternoon that I would confess my feelings for her, no matter what the cost.
     I went to her following class the next day, and heard myself utter some unintelligible phrase that sounded like, “ Yergly nu bibbly schnict.”  Realizing from the schreeching laugh that followed I had once again made a fool of myself, I retreated to the safety of a nearby locker.
     I wallowed in self-pity for many moons thereafter, cursing the stars each night as they appeared. I cursed the sun that dared to bring about another day for me to endure.
     It was then, as I reached rock bottom, that I discovered I was not alone.  There were other dweebs out there, just like me.  And like me, they all carried around their own bags of scorn.  At that precise moment I began to stop feeling sorry for myself, and determined to move on.  I found that in my deepest sorrow, when I don’t have a leg to stand on, I can lean on my fellow dweebs. But, even more so, I think, is that I found that “dweeb” could have a whole new meaning and that I could call these outcasts, friends.