Kickme

'''Kick Me: Adventures In Adolescence Written by Paul Feig'''

Advanced Praise for Paul Feig's Kick Me

(from back cover)

"I love Pual Feig's sense of humor--in a platonic way. This bok is hilarious. I reccomend it to people like me. And to people who don't like me." --Garry Shandling

"It's shocking that one person could have so many humiliating experiences and even more shocking taht he chose to remember them. Kick Me is like an unofficial prequel to Freaks and Geeks. If anything, Paul Feig's real stories are actually more harrowing than what his fictional characters went through." --Ira Glass, Host of This American Life

"Paul Feig's Kick Me is an astute stud of growing up in the seventies that thinks it's a happy-go-lucky humor book." --Joel Hodgson, Creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000

Dear Paul,

Thank you for being so candid with your experiences. It, indeed, took courage and a good sense of humor to share so much. I thought I might take this opportunity to pass on a little advice to you and any others who might encounter the same situations. These are just a few thoughts that came to mind as I read through your book.

If you're going to wear you're going to wear your mother's make-up as you did in your story "Scared Straight" let me give you a couple tips guys might not know about. I've been told that if you leave it on overnight, it'll age your skin seven days! Plus, you'll wake up with it smeared all over your pillow. So wash it off. Water and a little soap works fine.

If for some reason the neighborhood kids peek through the window and catch you wearing your mother's dress, you can do a couple things. I would pretend to sleep walk or tell them you just returned from being abducted by aliens. They might go easier on you that way.

Also, I understand the heart ache you must have felt in your story "I was a poety, and, yes, I did know it" when your second poem wasn't a success. That's something we in the biz' call the "sophomore slump". It happens. Sometimes good poetry comes easy. Perhaps it had germinated in your subconscious and it was just read to bloom. You gotta write for the love of it, not to impress the teacher. Although, I know how much you liked being your teacher's star pupil. Like poetry, "sucking up" is one of those things that just comes natural to some of us. We belong in the front row. Our words need to echo in the ears over every other student every five minutes. "Why can everyone be more like us?" the teachers asks himself.

It was wise of you to be so careful when rummaging through you parent's closet looking for Christmas present in the story "Out of the closet. But you do need to be more discreet. My sister perfected the strategy of unwrapping gifts to see what they were and then re-wrapping them so the parents never knew. That's cool that your parents kept gifts a secret. Once you get older, they go shopping with you, ask you what you want, and then tell you to go "take a walk" as if this charade kept the magic and mystery alive.

I don't ever remember believe in Santa Clause. Call it a tragedy if you like. Even at a young age, I was very rational and systematic about things. I enjoyed reading Consumer Reports and sorting my baseball cards based on the way each player was posed or on the color of the card or their batting averages. Ah well.

Sincerely, Caleb Mains