When I Was A Loser: True Stories of (Barely) Surviving High SchoolEdited by John McNallyFree Press/Simon & Schuster
For most of us, high school-and all its antics-isn’t that far removed in time, memory and behavior. We’d like to think so, but just take a look around campus. Jocks join fraternities, wannabe jocks join the MUSS and anti-jocks write for The Chronicle.
Same deal, people!
So how can a literary homage to high school, i.e., When I Was A Loser, satisfactorily delve into an underdeveloped sense of nostalgia we all share?
Simply, it’s enjoyable.
Full of witty, sarcastic, sometimes stoically derived commentary on all things high school, When I Was A Loser adequately lives up to its title. This anthology of writers-including, but not limited to, Brad Land, Julianna Baggott, Owen King and Johanna Edwards-exposes the truth that no matter who we thought or think we were in “the good ol’ days,” each and every one of us was in fact a total loser.
Embracing all the little quirks and priorities of our formative teenage years, the contributors to When I Was A Loser write the gamut from teenage religious fanaticism to perms and other hair conundrums, to the embarrassment of meeting Zsa Zsa Gabor with pubic hairs you know where (gross, I can’t believe I’m writing about this).
Such autobiographical sketches are well-written, outright funny and downright heartrending, and they offer different perspectives of the high school experience (although nary a jock contributes).
These authors may have been losers back in high school when the majority of us hadn’t even been thought of being conceived yet, but their insight mirrors the past of our own lives to make it instantly relatable, bringing to our memory what it was like to be in high school-what it was like to be a loser.