Unqualified
Anna Faris
Chris Pratt
Since October 2015, a whole lot of people have been getting relationship advice from a very well-intentioned but untrained source — actress Anna Faris — on her ridiculously popular podcast, Unqualified.Anna’s own personal life was messy, even while her career soared as the lead in the Scary Movie franchise, and as the star of the CBS comedy, MOM. She started Unqualified as something gone-a-goof, but the podcast is already getting 1.5 million downloads a month, and is consistently one of the most popular out there.Now, working with collaborator Rachel Bertsche, she is telling all in her first book UNQUALIFIED. Unable to find an ex who would spill the beans, Chris has graciously agreed to write the introduction.
ANNA FARIS is an actress, producer, and top-rated podcaster: Her podcast, Anna Faris is Unqualified, averages four million downloads a month. Faris currently stars on the CBS hit comedy Mom and has had memorable roles on Entourage and Friends. She will next star in MGM/Pantelion Film’s remake of Overboard alongside Eugenio Derbez. Faris produced and starred in The House Bunny and What’s Your Number?, and her additional films include the Scary Movie franchise, Lost in Translation, The Dictator, Observe and Report, Brokeback Mountain, Just Friends, Smiley Face, Keanu, and the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs franchise. A native of Washington State, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.
To Chris.
Your wisdom and strength have made me a better person.
CONTENTS
Cover (#u758d7e1e-8b18-516b-8d7d-d8783d016aa2)
About the Author (#ubc79bc1a-529c-5aee-bc79-55c0c989735b)
Title Page (#u0a735023-40f6-50b4-b935-b1370e7b2751)
Dedication (#u7c077d3b-d61b-5eae-ab86-77dd1cd48e27)
Forward by Chris Pratt (#ulink_7c6ade19-92b2-5119-b9e8-80bf9b4375ae)
Introduction: I Rote a Book! (#ulink_1f7fb2a7-46cd-5e9f-aa50-e4420ec66894)
The Fastest Boy in the Third Grade (#ulink_6861d4f2-3383-528d-ad4d-c1ad9d54a357)
List to Live By: The Professions of Men You Should Not Date (I Broke My Own Rules) (#ulink_aa873815-3132-5734-bcb0-4d738294c140)
Ich Liebe Dich
Unqualified Advice: Squad Goals?
Losing My Virginity, and Other Horrible Sexual Escapades
Listener Advice: I Was the Short Girl. What Were You?
Proud and Angry
Turning the Tables: Not-So-Rapid Fire
Waiting …
Unqualified Advice: Should You Move for the Guy?
The Wedding Hoopla
Unqualified Advice: Not Enough Soul
Meet My Parents
Playing House
Listener Advice: How to Get Over a Breakup
Take Me Home Tonight. Literally.
Turning the Tables: Deal Breakers
Just Friends: A Conversation Between a Man and a Woman Who’ve Been Pals for Fifteen Years and Haven’t Slept Together
Scoliosis Check
List to Live By: Sex on the Beach and Thirteen Other Things That Sound Better Than They Are
Listener List: Things That Sound Better Than They Are, Part 2
What’s Your Number? (And Why Do We Reveal It?)
Comedy, Fame, and the Gross Words
Unqualified Advice: The Bush Is Back
Can I Marry You?
Unqualified Advice: Unicorns Aren’t Found, They’re Made
Chatroulette
How to Deal with Jealousy
Turning the Tables: How Would You Proceed?
Jack Pratt
Unqualified Advice: Protect Your Heart
Listener Advice: More Love Mantras
Forty
Unqualified Advice: How to Tune Out the Noise
Friday, January 6, 2017
She Said, He Said: What It’s Like to Be a Couple in Hollywood
Unqualified Advice: I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About, but Here’s Some Other Free (Or Only the Cost of This Book) Unqualified Advice
This Is the Chapter That Will Make You Vomit
Don’t Call It Closure
Acknowledgments
Copyright
FORWARD (#ulink_19100344-7c76-520d-996d-5484e35c72ed)
By Chris Pratt
When I was asked to write the forward for Unqualified, Anna’s memoir, I immediately said yes without even thinking about it. And boy did a lot happen between then and now.
So much.
Like … soooo much.
So. Allow me to start by asking some questions:
First and foremost: What is a forward? Like, you know? What is it? Is a forward an anecdote? Like that time Anna and I went to the Beverly Hills library and I told her it was the first time I’d ever been in a library and then she looked at me like I must be joking? And I pretended I was joking? And boy did we laugh. But I wasn’t joking? Is that a forward?
I don’t really read books all that much. I mean, I know how to read, as in sounding out words and phrases, sentences, and the like. I can spell, too! I’ll stop now. I feel like I’m bragging. But let’s just say books aren’t really my specialty. Per se.
I do read a lot of screenplays.
May I paint you a forward in screenplay format?
Fade in.
Int. Bedroom. Night. Chris Pratt (early twenties, roguishly handsome) stares blankly at his phone. He blinks a couple of times.
Distracted, Chris begins watching forearm workout videos for several hours.
Fade out.
Credits roll.
Thunderous applause. Oscar nom Best Short Film. #blessed
Okay … Back to it.
Crickets.
Stares at phone.
Literally googles the word forward.
Wow … Okay. So … it’s actually spelled FOREWORD. With an O and an E. Who knew? Siri did. Of course. We’ve been through a lot, she and I.
Anyhow, lesson learned. Now, let’s move FOREWORD and discuss someone else with whom I’ve been through a lot.
My Foreword
By Chris Pratt
Anna is an important part of my life and she always will be. She asked me to write this foreword. And I’m doing so because I love and respect her and told her I would.
She and I have a striking number of similarities.
We were both raised in Washington State, just twenty minutes from each other. (Coincidentally, we didn’t meet until working together in LA.) I played football on her high school field, a fact I’ve pointed out every single time we’ve driven past that school in ten years, to which, every time, she reacts with a gracious amount of faux wonder, kind sweetheart. We’re both actors who made it in Hollywood, being cast as intelligently played idiots: me, Andy Dwyer; her, Cindy Campbell. We both have scars on our left hands, the results of drunken accidents that left us with nerve damage. We each had dead-bug collections before meeting. And even though they’re not the same, Linda Goodman, author of Love Signs, claims our astrological signs are the most compatible with each other.
But there are a few differences as well. For one: Anna is a voracious information collector. She reads, hears, watches, and retains an inordinate amount of stories—from podcasts and NPR pieces to New Yorker articles. She’ll often pore over the newspaper while simultaneously watching a TV show and blow drying her hair. She reads the big five: The New York Times, LA Times, The Seattle Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. Whereas I read “The Big 5” sporting goods ads, looking for good deals on guns and Rollerblades.
Anna is kind, possibly to a fault. I’m proud to say we each approach most human interactions with politeness, and patience when required. We’re both well-known actors, and it’s worth mentioning—fame can be a pain in the butt. But we’re thick-skinned. And despite what it may seem, we’ll be just fine regardless of what you think of us. She’s been in the spotlight longer than me yet continues to be the voice of reason in uncomfortable situations regarding our lack of anonymity. When approached by fans and photographers, she smiles and shows kindness. As do I, although my annoyance and bubbling anger with paparazzi tend to be more thinly veiled.
Anna is graceful with strangers and fans because she is actually wildly interested in every person she meets. She asks great questions. She communes with anybody and makes an instant connection with each person she meets, which lasts … a VERY SHORT TIME. Like a “goldfish, three seconds, turn around and you’re strangers” kind of way? Almost like Dory from Finding Nemo? Or the movie Memento? And that person, that nameless, forgotten person, knowing full well the moment is over, still somehow walks away feeling charmed and deeper in love than before. That’s just how intoxicating she is.
Being TV and film stars, we live a circus lifestyle, pulled this way and that by jobs, strangers, lives on the road, all in service of the crowd. I see it as a calling in terms of the platform I’ve been given and a job that keeps me from breaking my back doing construction. For Anna, acting is a passion. She simply loves it. More than maybe anyone I know. There are home videos of her playing made-up characters from as early as eight years old. She started younger than that and really hasn’t stopped since. On set and off she is constantly slipping into character, often her go-to clown: the awful party girl you may have seen in Just Friends (perhaps the greatest supporting role in a comedy by anyone ever—no hyperbole), as well as many more with our son. She lives to entertain.
And finally, more than anything, Anna deserves this book. I can promise you it will be a great and interesting read. A face-first dive into the mind and person that I spent one amazing decade with, and will, for the rest of my life, amicably coparent a human. She is the amazing, effervescent, former short girl, theater nerd, camp counselor, crossing guard, headgear-wearing, feistmeister, character-playing Anna Kay Faris, the “I was such a late bloomer I had to actually learn social skills to survive and developed wit to get by and then turned hot later” fan of Real Housewives, good times, extravagance, prudence, herself, her family, podcasts, books, white guilt, neurosis, great foods, repeated deep musical moments, mornings with the newspaper, small bites, feminism, and more.
And in all the years we were together, I don’t think I smelled her farts once. They’re probably not too bad.
Enjoy.
Introduction (#ulink_d357d26c-7ff7-5a10-b18a-0da4192dc485)
I Rote a Book! (#ulink_d357d26c-7ff7-5a10-b18a-0da4192dc485)
I’m not qualified to write a book.
I might as well have woken up one morning and thought, What can I do today that I have no experience doing, that I’m sure to make an ass out of myself while doing, and that will test a population’s patience with my mental ability? Rite a book! So I called my agent and got a book deal. Bingo, bango! Anyone can do this!
Truthfully, though, I’m terrified. I should have done a better job of thinking this through. You know how the biggest decisions in your life never appear as the lightbulb flashes you see in cartoons but instead germinate in the deepest crevasse in your brain and slowly take root until suddenly a blossom emerges in the forefront? That’s pretty much what writing a book was for me. An idea I toyed with now and then, which eventually became more now than then, and suddenly I was pursuing literary agents and, before I had a chance to come to my senses, I was documenting my life (or at least my life in relationships) in writing.
As my mom keeps reminding me, I do have a degree in English from the University of Washington, a school that after five long, hard years taught me that I am unpleasant to be around after smoking weed out of a four-foot bong. But I don’t think anyone, in my seventeen years of living in Hollywood, has ever actually asked me about my education. That’s kind of the beauty (or horror?) of LA. No one gives a shit about any credit outside “the industry.” So writing a book seemed like a fun, exploratory journey into the literary world, and a nice way to flex those English-major muscles.
But now the train has left the station and I feel as though I’m bound to disappoint many people in my life, including you, dear reader. I’m an actor, and have been since I was nine, so I should point out that I have been hiding behind characters and other people’s words for a long time. There is always an out. Writing a book and putting my own words into the world is terrifying in the very way that performing in front of a camera will never be. In 2011, I naively and arrogantly agreed to be the subject of a profile in the New Yorker. It was written over the course of six months and when the fact-checker called me a few weeks before publication to read my own words back to me—words that I had spoken and completely forgotten—I knew I had to leave the country for good. My own vanity was about to destroy all I had worked for in Hollywood. Ultimately that didn’t happen, but I did have to make a couple of apologetic phone calls.
Other small points of concern: I haven’t used a computer properly ever, in my entire life. When you have a job where you make faces and say other people’s words, you don’t have to learn technology. Sometimes you don’t even have to learn how to dress yourself, ’cause nice Lara is there to zip you up. So anyone at your neighborhood nursing home is more qualified to be punching these little buttons on this here keypad.
In fact, I think I might even have a typo in the title of this chapter.
Also, I don’t know why I can’t nap. I know that’s not related, but it sort of is in that I want you to know everything about me, dear reader. You and I will be best friends after all this is over. I would like it if you would send me your autobiography, too.
Oh, and I’m really bad at social media. Why do I need to record everything online? Can’t I just keep it in my brain? But I’m told that it’s necessary to sell a book these days.
So, just so we understand each other, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
That’s never stopped me before, though. Actually, that’s not true. Until I was nineteen, I thought I was supposed to know everything. I didn’t, obviously, but I accepted that there was a universal understanding that we all faked it, and the polite thing to do was quietly continue the charade. I knew to lay low and keep quiet so I wouldn’t get made fun of. Then one day during my sophomore year at UW, I was sitting in the back of Intro to Something (Psychology? Sociology? I can’t remember. I was miserable at the beginning of college. I sat in the back of giant lecture halls writing letters to Dustin, the “just a friend” I was in love with, who was studying abroad in Spain), when this good-looking fraternity guy raised his hand. I don’t know what the professor was even talking about, just that the dude with his hand up said, “I don’t know what that means.” I remember a record scratch in my head: Somebody just confessed they didn’t know something? There was so much bluster—everyone was always pretending they had all the answers. So it came as a shock to me that it was okay for someone—especially a hot frat type—to say, “Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you’re all going to think I’m stupid, and maybe I am, but I don’t understand.”
There’s liberation in admitting you don’t know what you’re doing. For me, it took years of comedy acting to get there. When you’re shooting a film like Scary Movie you have to constantly confess that you have no idea if something is going to work, and it turns out it feels good to say, “I don’t know how to do this.”
So let me say it again: I have zero qualifications, and no one should be listening to me.
And yet, I want to help you with your love life. I do. I have advice to share—who you should date, who you absolutely shouldn’t—and some cautionary tales, too. Plus, I’m fascinated by other people’s relationships. In fact, I’m fascinated by other people’s lives. What they ate for dinner, who they slept with last night; it’s all equally interesting to me. And while I don’t like to butt in, I do love to offer helpful, if sometimes unsolicited, wisdom. (That’s butting in, isn’t it? I’m the worst. I’m a horrible person.)
I’ve been doling out romantic advice my whole life. Most recently, and most publicly, on Anna Faris Is Unqualified, the podcast I cohost with my friend Sim Sarna, but my penchant for digging into other people’s personal lives started decades ago. When I was eleven, my mom’s friend came over to our house, sobbing. She was ranting about how awful her husband was, and I eavesdropped until I couldn’t stand it anymore. “You have to leave him!” I butted in. She had two kids, but who cared? Kids, shmids. I was passionate about this. It was the only logical solution. She could run away and start a new life! She should totally leave him! Why didn’t she just leave him?! It would be so easy! JUST LEAVE HIM!! When she didn’t—because, of course she didn’t, because life is complicated—I was profoundly disappointed.
My craving for a relationship of my own started before I played therapist to my mother’s friend. For as long as I can remember, I wanted a boyfriend so, so badly. My mother, a ferocious feminist, couldn’t stand how boy crazy I was. She hated Pretty Woman and didn’t let me watch Grease because she disapproved of how Sandy changed herself for Danny in the end. She was adamant that I never be dependent on a man, and it created a massive inner conflict in me. I knew I wasn’t supposed to long for a boyfriend as much as I did, which just made me want one more. I’d stay up late reading Sweet Valley High books, and even though I knew they were kind of stupid, I got off on the drama. The idea of boys fighting over me made me dizzy, probably because no one ever did. I bribed Jason Sprott, the fastest boy in the third grade, with ice cream just to get him to talk to me.
In the absence of a relationship of my own, I lived through other people’s. I read Dear Abby and listened to Dr. Joyce Brothers and watched Sally Jesse Raphael. I did theater work around Seattle and was riveted when the lead actress flirted with the hot set dude. I wanted so intensely to be grown up, because to me, the defining feature of adulthood was getting to be in love.
When I was seventeen, I started dating my first official boyfriend, Chad Burke. He was unbelievably good-looking, but also, shall we say, “dark.” Chad was popular, thanks to his looks, but he was also cynical and angry and would sneak out at night to write Rage Against the Machine lyrics on the telephone poles in our town. I couldn’t believe that someone that hot would like me, and I was young, so I would have done anything for him. We went out for a year, and, like Felicity, I followed him to college. Two weeks after the school year began I would call his fraternity and he wouldn’t come to the phone. I got drunk and went to his frat house and they wouldn’t let me see him. Eventually we ran into each other and Chad told me he was dumping me. Clearly, I didn’t have as much of a handle on the whole dating thing as I thought I did.
After Chad, I went from one relationship to the next. Because I was constantly trying to make a bad thing work, I was a serial monogamist, and I’m embarrassed to admit that it used to take meeting another person for me to realize that Oh, this relationship might not be working. I’ve had my share of romantic troubles, and what has continually provided me with comfort is the knowledge that millions of people out there have been through what I’ve been through. Heartbreak and rejection are communal. Love is life’s greatest mystery and wildest adventure.
God, that’s so fucking corny.
I started a relationship podcast because, to me, giving advice and hearing other people’s stories is better than therapy. Not that I’m in therapy. I probably should be, but I find it too frustrating to not know anything about the person I’m talking to. The two times I visited a therapist I found myself asking about them—“I don’t see a ring on your finger. Are you divorced? That must have been hard. Tell me everything!”—and they politely but firmly deflect and steer the conversation back to me. Then I try to get them to tell me about their other patients, which they seem to think is against some sort of rule.
Hearing other people’s problems is, in its own weird way, comforting. It’s a relief to me that so many of the trials I’ve had, other people have, too. And while I may be unqualified, I’m not uninterested. I care and I listen and maybe I don’t always give the best advice, but I really do try. I dig a lot. I have no problem asking anyone anything. I’ll try to curb my own obnoxiousness by saying, “I know this is personal … ,” but then I go in for the kill: “How did you and your husband meet?” or “Oh, you’re online dating? How does that work? Ever get catfished?” Some people really respond to it. Other people really, really don’t.
I know what you’re thinking: That all sounds great for a podcast, where that girl who looks like Mena Suvari can take callers and have a conversation, but what’s going on with this book? Well, apparently, after two years of hearing other people’s stories, I’ve learned a few things. About myself, about dating, and about the commonality of lust and heartbreak and desire and rejection and giddiness. I’ve been reminded that whether you’re in LA or Atlanta or Dubuque, your pride will be wounded after a breakup, you’ll struggle to tell a friend when you can’t stand her boyfriend, and when you’re truly happy, you’ll know it. I’ve learned that there are some universal truths: If your closest friends stop showing up to your barbecues, you’re probably in a bad relationship. And if you opt for kindness over teasing, you’re probably in a good one.
I’ve come a long way since that night in 1987 when I so cavalierly told a mom of two to up and leave her husband. I don’t get a rush from encouraging breakups anymore. These days I’m more interested in bringing people together. In fact, just recently, a friend of mine was going through a bad breakup, and thank God I was there. She and her ex had had this incredibly passionate, whirlwind courtship—within two months of meeting they were planning the wedding. But then they broke up, which was not entirely surprising in a situation like that. Shortly afterward, my friend came over to my house and was so incredibly upset. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to intervene. There was still a lot of love there, I just knew it, so I asked my friend for her phone. “What are you going to say?” she asked.
Didn’t she trust me?
“Just let me have your phone,” I said. My text was simple: “Hey, it’s Anna. I don’t know what you’re doing right now but will you come over?” He did, and they had a beautiful, romantic night. I was so proud of myself! I got them back together and all would be fine and, like I said, I knew there was love there. I knew it.
He ended up leaving two days later and she was devastated and I think maybe a little annoyed at me. So, yeah. It backfired.
Still, points for trying?
In this book, you’ll find stories of my relationships, both the disastrous and the heartwarming. You’ll meet childhood Anna (pronounced Ah-na, rhymes with Donna, even though everyone gets it wrong and I never correct them), armed with flannel shirts and menacing headgear, and adult Anna, with more flannel shirts but much better teeth. You’ll get some advice, a few lists, and some childhood photos (I’m the short one).
Read. Have fun. And please purchase the sequel: I Have No Idea What the Fuck I’m Talking About: The Motherhood Book.
The Fastest Boy in the Third Grade (#ulink_b32bc003-26fb-531a-8600-6da5814384f5)
Remember when you first spotted him sprinting across the playground, schooling the other boys in a heated game of tag? Or the moment you noticed him at his desk, brown spiky hair sticking up in all the right places?
He was the first boy to make you crave the male gaze; he made you wonder what it would be like to have a boyfriend; he inspired you to start a diary.
You’ve been there, dear reader, haven’t you?
For me, that boy was Jason Sprott.
Jason Sprott was the fastest boy in the third grade. You know how in elementary school everyone is known by their first and last name? Jason Sprott was always, and only, Jason Sprott.
He had the most adorable freckles and a great smile and spiky brown hair that I couldn’t resist. We were in the same class, but we were nowhere near each other on the social hierarchy. Jason was a sweet, confident kid who totally knew his own charm—the top of the social food chain. I had more of a C-level social status. It started when I moved to Edmonds, Washington—a suburb thirty minutes outside Seattle—when I was six. I went from a blue-collar community in Baltimore where everyone was friends and had barbecues and family get-togethers to this faux-upper-class neighborhood that felt incredibly superficial. I know that’s counter to the perception of Seattle, but my brother and I both felt like it was different in Edmonds. When I say I’m from Seattle it always feels misleading—moving to Edmonds felt a little bit like moving to Anywhere, USA. It did not live up to the Seattle stereotype.
We arrived in Edmonds in the spring, and on my first day of first grade, my mom put me in a really dramatic sheepskin coat. When she buttoned me up that morning, all I could think was, I cannot wear this to my first day of school. I was six, and even then I knew this was not good. A six-year-old in sheepskin does not have the makings of social success.
Sure enough, the other kids completely mocked me. It stung, but it also planted the seed for a weird-clothing rebellion that emerged in middle school. During those years, I wore the most hideous sweater, Charlie Brown but in reverse: it had more of the dark color than the light, and it was totally disgusting, but I embraced it for its ugliness. That sweater was my early fuck-you to the mean girls and the popular kids and the mundane existence I thought Edmonds offered. Then, in ninth grade, I wore a Christmas tree skirt like a cape, which of course got me lots of suitors.
Do I look stoned in fifth grade?
Looking back over the years, I’ve always gotten a lot of strength from being the underdog, or what felt at the time like the underdog. Maybe that started with Jason Sprott. He had a twin brother, David, but unfortunately for David they weren’t identical. All the girls had a crush on Jason.
We were in the same class. Jason sat in front, as did his girlfriend, Michelle. I preferred to sit in the back and stare at my crush and his little hair spikes. I recently found the diary I kept in third grade, with pages of scribbles about Jason Sprott. I love Jason Sprott. I hate Jason Sprott. I love Jason Sprott. He smiled at me today. We were assigned our Greek gods and he was Eros, the god of love, and I was the unsexy Hera but he shot me with his arrow.
One day, I was in the cafeteria and Jason was behind me in the lunch line. After buying my lunch, I spent the thirty-five cents I had left over on the ice milk dessert. Ice milk was imitation ice cream before frozen yogurt was a thing. I guess it was better for you, but to us third graders, it was all the same. At least, it was appealing enough to get Jason’s attention.
“Man, I wish I could get an ice cream,” I heard him say behind me.
“I’ll buy you one!” I offered eagerly.
This transaction—my using my extra change to buy Jason Sprott ice cream, Jason Sprott letting me buy him ice cream—went on for a couple of weeks, until finally he said, “I’ll go out with you, but you’ve got to know that I’m also going out with Michelle.” He was a real class act: he told me about Michelle and was honest that he wanted us both. Sounds good, I thought. I’ll take what I can get!
Michelle was supercool and popular and had a fountain in her house, which was a big deal. The next year, in fourth grade, I invited her over to my place, and she actually accepted and came to my home. That was a shock. My mom had just bought an inflatable boat from Costco. She blew it up, and Michelle and I put it on my bed and played white-water rafting adventure. We were laughing and really getting into it, riding the make-believe waves and capsizing onto the bed. I’d never seen that side of her. I thought we were having so much fun. A week later, the popular girls all made fun of me because I liked to play boat.
But back in third grade, when my romance with Jason was blossoming, Michelle and I didn’t have much of a relationship. Shortly after I bought Jason that first ice cream, she came up to me and said, “I know you’re going out with Jason too, and I just want you to know I’m cool with it.” She walked away before I could even respond.
Jason and I didn’t speak to each other during our courtship. I mostly saw him during recess, when everyone played tag, and of course he never got caught, since he was such a fast runner. It was the hottest thing about him. But even at recess we were G-rated. There was a big moment on the playground when Amy Gray and Sean Bryant were going to have their first kiss and everyone crowded around them and they exchanged the tiniest little peck. That was a pretty huge event—I remember it more than any actual education I got in third grade. The non-kiss was a monumental moment in my social education. But with Jason and me, there was no peck. There was just the lunchroom, where I continued to bribe him daily with ice milk. I knew, on some level, that I was buying this guy. I wasn’t getting his attention on my own merit. Even at eight years old, I was a realist. So while it was exciting that he went out with me, it felt like what I imagine it feels like when you win the lottery but you only win, like, $5,000.
Still, I envisioned myself as the third-grade Seattle equivalent of a scrappy Boston fighter. All odds were against me—I shouldn’t say that, because I’m a blond white American person—but when it came to Anna versus Michelle, there was no comparison in the eyes of the elementary schoolers. I was the short girl who wore a sheepskin coat to her first day of school; Michelle had a fountain in her house. That pretty much said it all, and yet there I was, sharing Jason with her. For the first time, when it came to social status, I was A-list-adjacent.
Jason dumped me a couple of weeks later. He confronted me at recess and said, “I don’t think we should go out anymore, I’m just going out with Michelle.” It was a stab to the heart. I was devastated. I had nothing to give him but my thirty-five cents and he didn’t even want that anymore. Maybe Michelle got in his head. She was supersassy and played her cards right. I, on the other hand, was a true sugar mama.
So I did what any heartbroken eight-year-old would do: I went home, grabbed an orange from the fridge, wrote Jason’s name on the peel in black marker, and threw it off the deck into the forest outside my house. When I was a kid, I wanted to live in the Yukon, so I spent a lot of time in that backyard forest relishing my loneliness. I was dying to live a more dramatic life than Edmonds offered, even then. And this weird ritual, which I deemed “the orange ceremony,” seemed like a start. I don’t know where I came up with it. I certainly didn’t read a book that said to pick up an orange and write a boy’s name on it in order to get over him, but I ended up doing it with a few different love interests. I must have thought it was profoundly symbolic: that by casting this fruit into the abyss, I would somehow rid myself of the hold these emotions had on me. Even at that age, it’s so surprising the intensity of feelings you can have for somebody. I felt the need to be liked and the need to be popular, but I was tortured by that neediness, because I was also proud and wanted desperately to be confident and independent. I thought the ritual would help. I remember throwing the orange out there and thinking, Now I am complete! Now I am over Jason Sprott!
It didn’t work; I was not released. The next day I went to school and saw Jason, and saw Michelle, and was just as devastated.
That episode began my long and complicated journey with the idea of closure. Basically, I don’t believe in it. I believe in the concept; I get why people crave it, and I understand why I, even in third grade, sought it from the orange ceremony. It’s frustrating to feel so powerless against your own feelings. But as an adult, I’ve learned that closure is unobtainable. I think it happens at death, maybe. But remembering the pain is a good thing, because all those experiences that you can’t close the door on make you a more empathetic person, and that should be embraced.
I have a pattern—it takes meeting a new guy to help me get over the old one. In the case of Jason Sprott, it was another Jason. He was the newspaper boy, supercute and a little bit brooding. I left him sodas outside my house every day so he could have a drink while he was delivering papers. I was totally into bribing these guys. What can I give him out of my fridge that will get his attention? I think there are five pages in my diary that read: I am so over Jason Sprott, I am totally into Jason Berry. He is soooooooooooooo hot and such a mystery! But one day he didn’t take the soda, and I think that was his way of saying, “No more, you sad girl.”
Despite our tragic end, Jason Sprott will always be my first crush. We ended up going to different high schools, so I lost track of him after eighth grade. He has probably changed a lot in the past thirty years. But to me he’ll forever be Jason Sprott: lover of running, subsidized ice cream, and spiky bangs.
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