A Funny Revelation

So, I was never the “cool” guy growing up. I was never suave enough or bad boy enough to reach into that stratosphere of the elementary school hierarchy. However, I realized there was a common trait between all those guys I perceived to be cool. They all had the uncanny ability to make others laugh (or annoy the teachers according to who you ask) and discovering this was the moment I started making my move from a “likable” guy to one people actually wanted to be around. The sudden realization of this came first during sixth grade. It was a tumultuous year that saw me switching to a new school and being thrust into the situation of needing to make new friends in a new environment. Needless to say, I struggled with this endeavor and countless web searches on google and articles on WikiHow were no help with these issues either. My only solution was to just be funny the following year. This was no small feat as I had never considered myself funny before, so I really needed to dig deep. I started seventh grade with a bang. I clearly remember the orbit gum joke I made during the first week of seventh grade. We were learning about mutually beneficial relationships in the wild and one example was a bird cleaning the teeth of an alligator. The alligator gets clean teeth while the bird not only doesn’t get eaten but gets a free lunch out of it; Almost like a good first date but I digress. My very special spontaneous joke for this instance was to turn around to my buddy Winston behind me and said, “why do all that when you can just throw some orbits gum in there?!” and later in the day I heard Winston repeating the joke to HIS friends who were just as cool as he was. At that moment I knew I was onto something. It would take a little bit of me pushing out of my shell and not being afraid to possibly look like a fool in front of my classmates. That was actually fine by me because that still wouldn’t have been worse than how I felt during the entirety of sixth grade. Moving forward through seventh and eighth grade I would hone my comedic skills and some of my regular jokes were “Don’t say Simpson because I’ll turn yellow” or affectionately calling my seventh-grade teacher “Ms. Roscoe Jenkins” instead of “Ms. Roscoe” inspired by the Martin Lawrence movie Roscoe Jenkins Family Reunion. I over those two final years I didn’t quite get into that upper echelon, but I got very close. So close in fact that I would be hoisted on my classmates' shoulders towards the end of eighth grade and even created my own catchphrase. A lot closer than if I had never attempted to make the move at all. This would become my first lesson in the importance of stepping out of my shell and stepping out of the background to expose myself to people who wouldn’t otherwise notice I even existed. This is a lesson I would need to use only a couple of years later during my sophomore year of high school. But that’ll be a story for a different day.