I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star Read Free Page A

Angelina Jolie (or insert person you think unreasonably beautiful here), but at least I don’t look like my grandpa. (Sorry, Grandpa, I mean, you still landed my grandma, and she was smokin’ so…)

    Ugly Judy 1

    Ugly Judy 2

    Pretty Judy

    Ugly Grandpa

    Smokin’ Hot Grandma
    When I was a kid, my mom didn’t read me stories at night; she played these tapes of nursery rhymes for me that came with corresponding books. During the story a bell would sound for when you’d turn the page of the book. I got so good at following the bells that I took a book to preschool one day, gathered the other children around me in a circle, and read them my story. I had memorized the whole thing, including when to turn the page. When the teacher overheard me reading a book to the other kids,she freaked out, called my mom at work, and told her that I was a genius and I could read. I was three. My mother asked what, exactly, I was reading, and when the teacher told her, my mom said, “She’s not reading that book; she has it memorized. Is there anything else? I am in a meeting.” My mom didn’t suffer fools gladly.
    My favorite book/tape my mom played for me was
The Ugly Duckling
. I felt, even at that young age, that the story of the ugly duckling was about me. I loved how the ugly duckling turned into a beautiful swan, and the older I got, and the uglier I got, the more I prayed that I would be like that duckling. This was the dawn of my ongoing obsession with makeover movies and makeovers in general. Don’t all teenage girls have this phase? Even if it lands them in a Hot Topic or with a horrible perm? In retrospect, I feel like that story is full of shit, because, like, when have you ever seen an ugly duckling? They are the cutest little creatures out there. Not a one of them is even a little bit hard to swallow, visually speaking. But whatever, I didn’t think of that when I was younger. I just wanted to believe that my transformation day would come. And it kind of did.
    The summer between junior and senior years of high school was a big one for me. My hair magically grew overnight, I got my braces off, I started wearing contacts instead of glasses, and I got a real boyfriend!! Eric Campbell. He was cute, nice, funny, a whole year older than me, and about to start his first year of college at University of Michigan!
What?
That’s not even the best part! He was also a drummer in an actual band that played rock concerts at bars and clubs in Detroit! I got to be a band girl! It was so awesome that I didn’t even care that dating a drummer meant I always had to be there early to watch him set up and I always had to wait approximately one year after the show was over for him to pack up his drums. I didn’t care about anything except that he liked me and he didn’t go to my high school, whichmeant that he had no idea what it was like for me there. After that summer when I outgrew my “ ’FroMama” phase (thank you, Jason Baranowski, for that delightful nickname), I felt like my life was a John Hughes movie and I was having a major Ally Sheedy circa
The Breakfast Club
moment. I got a makeover and a boyfriend, but I still realized who I was on the inside and what was
really
important. Kind of.
    College turned out to be an even better platform for a makeover. Now I was in a completely new place with all new people, and I was ready for a complete reinvention. I bleached out my ’fro and worked hard to shed the Michigan me. My mom’s advice to me before I left for school in Chicago was “Don’t shit where you eat.” So, I also planned on playing impossible to get at my new school, too (it always works to make you more desirable and mysterious, unless no one wants to get you, in which case it just keeps you from hooking up with guys who will talk behind your back, win-win). College was when I felt like I really came into my own, except for one small mishap my first year. After several minutes of debilitating abdominal pain, I