If You Really Knew Me...

The other night I stumbled upon a fascinating, depressing train wreck of a show on MTV called If You Really Knew Me. I have to admit, I couldn’t bear to watch the whole thing, but I’m pretty sure the premise was this: high school kids are all herded into a gymnasium to get into groups of seven or eight kids from different social strata to tell each other how it really is. So, a group of kids might include a jock, a student counsel kid, a stoner, a nerd, a Goth and a kind of slutty girl. They go around the circle, and each start a sentence, “If you really knew me…,” and then reveal something about themselves.

In and of itself, I find the premise of this show disastrous. When I was in high school, there was no one I wanted to know less of how I really felt than other high school kids. And the kids on this MTV show, regardless of their social position, ALL say the SAME thing: “I feel so terrible about myself, my life, and my fucked-up family that I have either tried to kill myself or think about it on a regular basis.”

Oh my God, MTV, these kids don’t need a day spent in the gym with a camera crew, they need help! They need counseling and social services and caring adults who will actually help them to feel safe and secure. But MTV packages this as being somehow redemptive because in the end, the jocks and the sluts and the druggies and the poor kids all hug it out and claim that things will be different and that they’ve gained a new appreciation of each other. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I will tell you this, if the crew of If You Really Knew Me set up shop in my neighborhood and started filming, I’d do exactly what I do in real life: keep the real stuff buried deep inside where it belongs and blurt out some random things that, while true, are not so damaging that I couldn’t bear for people to know. Here are a few of the things I’d say:

If You Really Knew Me, you’d know that one of my greatest fears is that, one day, I will fall while on a run, land on my face, and chip my front teeth into fangs. Of course, I will have somewhere important I have to be, or my dentist won’t be available for a couple of days, so I will be forced to wear pencil-top erasers on my fangs until I can get teeth replacements. People will call me Eraser Girl for years to follow, and say things like, “Hey, can I borrow an eraser?” and other lame stuff long after I have gotten attractive porcelain fronts.

If You Really Knew Me, you would have already heard about the three killers that I am certain are living in my house at all times. There’s one in the basement, one hiding in my bedroom closet, and one at large killer who might be anywhere at any time. To keep the killers from slicing my throat open, I employ the common strategy of whipping open doors as quickly as possible and yelling, “Ha!” while waving a hanger in front of my body as a defense. Everyone knows that when killers are confronted with a hanger and a shout, they are generally known to say, “Okay, you got me,” shrug, and exit the house.

If You Really Knew Me, you’d know that my dream first date is where the guy comes over to my house and just fixes stuff. Like, the screen on my back door and the light above my sink that doesn’t work and the front doorknob that maybe needs to be oiled or something? I don’t know. I’m not good at figuring out what’s gone wrong in my house, and sometimes I don’t even know the first step in getting it taken care of. And I will tell you this right now, a guy who comes over to my house and fixes stuff? That is a guy who I’d totally sleep with on the first date. A guy who knows how to put an extra electrical outlet in my bedroom is sexy as hell. A man who subscribes to Angie’s List? Give me a fucking break. You’re a goddamn man.

If You Really Knew Me, you would know that I am afraid of the following things: dying in a plane crash, killers living in my home, driving a car, being a passenger in a car, leaky pens, insects of every stripe, rotten food, raw eggs, weird smells, death of any kind, crowds, the kind of fungus that lives in the locker room at the gym, getting cornered by a squirrel, Indian accents, Chucky, deep venous thrombosis, running out of toilet paper, not fully erasing things that are meant to be erased, and not being able to find a place to park. And if you are my friend, which I think you are, you wouldn’t make fun of me for the things I fear, but instead, marvel in the fact that I manage to get through the day at all.