Stupid Fast - By Geoff Herbach Page 0,3

ass come fall, Reinstein.”

For the next five days, I stayed home. I didn’t go to school because I was wrecked by the false starts. I didn’t barf anymore, but I felt sick. I felt sweaty. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t rest. Moist sheets. Disgusting. Didn’t smell good. Jerri paced around the house all day while I lay there. She only stopped pacing to stare at me (or to go be a crossing guard for an hour). By day six, I was pretty hungry, so I ate a couple of bagels.

And that was that. No more track. Sophomore year was almost over. Summer was almost here.

While track was going, I felt I had a reason for getting out of my bed: Beat Ken Johnson. Without track, I was back to lying in bed wondering if I’m funny. (I really wanted to be a comedian…maybe I still do.)

CHAPTER 3: PROOF IN MAY I SHOULDN'T BE A COMEDIAN

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