Embarrassing moment #2: don’t try to grow facial hair before class photos.
In honour of Back To School looming next week – and the publication of my new book for young readers, Loyalist to a Fault – I talked to indie CanLit website, All Lit Up about some of my more embarrassing moments in school. Below is a preview, a preamble to a series of unfortunate events that include complications with braces, trombone solos, and teen goatees:
September is just around the corner, and while well over a decade has passed since I returned to any sort of schooling after the summer, I can’t help but continue to associate the month with all the typical back-to-school traditions: shopping for school supplies I probably don’t need (how many protractors can one boy handle?), class photos, and – most importantly – battling the utter dread of stepping foot into that roiling octagon of feelings, pressures, and hormones we have more simply decided, as a society, to call “school.”
While many students across Canada worry about very real, devastating concerns each day they attend school – bullying, poverty-induced hunger, severe learning disabilities, and more – as a person who has lived a mostly (hashtag?) blessed existence, my personal dread at attending school had more of a whiny-baby “personal humiliation” vibe. In my book series, The Dead Kid Detective Agency, our valiant narrator October Schwartz, experiences not only great personal humiliation (after all, her nickname is “Zombie Tramp”), but any number of other more real dangers, like bayonet-wielding history teachers, phone-booth tippers, and, in the third installment, Loyalist to a Fault, homicidal ghost pirates.
The following list of my own real-life messes should demonstrate that at least some of October’s mortifying misadventures were based on true events. Without further ado, I present your humble author’s seven favourite embarrassing moments from his own school days.
Read the full story at AllLitUp.
