Since I was a giant dork in middle school and high school, Paul Feig’s “Kick Me” really spoke to me, especially in the later chapters.
It’s so easy to take his name out and insert yourself into any number scenarios and be like, “yup, I totally did that.” The sheer awkwardness of every single chapter is almost painful in its truth.
His masterful observations of the world around him are seen through such a neurotic detail that it’s impossible to not be as squeamish or freaked out as he is in the moment. For example:
“Huh? Excuse me? I’m sorry, I must not have heard you correctly. It sounded like you said that we were all going to take a turn giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to that doll that Sgt. Korn had just had his grown man’s mouth all over. That couldn’t be right. It would be completely unsanitary. That is, unless of course you have a bunch of freshly boiled and sanitized resusci-Annies in the back, enough for each of us to have our own…My eyes zoomed in on Annie’s mouth. White and cold and open and now dripping with an indeterminate amount of Sgt. Korn’s spit and alcohol. My head started to spin.”
His brutal honesty and self awareness is just awesome. He totally owns his quirky personality and strange hang-ups. Although the whole time I was reading it, I kept wondering what a jock’s high school memoir would look like.
There are so many memoirs out there from the perspective of the ‘geek’ or the outcast, it got me to pondering how the geeky outcasts would look through the lens of the popular kid.
But anyway, this book is just a fun, enjoyable read.
