That you have never heard a story like this before.
I think it was 1995, and I was about twelve years old. The school year was about to kick off. The adults responsible for my care (I don’t like using specifics) were at work and had trusted me and the other kid I grew up with (specifics) to stay home alone. It was a lazy, aimless summer, but we always, always listened to this one morning radio show. And we weren’t the only ones. I guarantee you that hundreds of thousands of homes were doing the exact same thing.
At some point during the summer, this popular morning radio program had announced that it was going to do a contest, and I’m sorry, I don’t even remember what the contest was called. It was something like “The Most Unpopular Kid Contest.” Remember, it was the 90s. Even our prizes were mean. What the contest would entail is kids calling in and describing how unpopular they are, and then they would be entered into a random drawing that would occur that Friday.
Let me repeat this in case it isn’t quite clear-
Children called into a morning radio program that hundreds of thousands of people listened to and attempted to explain to all of those people why they thought no one liked them.
I think you can guess what I did.
Yeah, I called. And I got through. A radio station always has some sort of contest going on and one million-jillion nut jobs are calling in at any given moment of the day just because they literally can’t think of anything else to do. I think it’s fair to say that if you called a radio station one hundred times, ninety-nine of those times you would be greeted by a busy signal. But I got through.
I don’t remember why I decided to call. I think I knew I had a very limited chance of making it through, and even after that, of making it on-air, and EVEN AFTER THAT, of winning. I guess I thought it might have been a neat experience, and maybe the thought of hearing my voice on the radio was just too much for me to resist.
So, I called. I got through. I made it on-air. I explained that the reason I thought I was unpopular was because of my unrelenting love of Star Trek. I described the Star Trek t-shirt I was wearing and bragged about the Star Trek phone I was blabbing into. It was shaped like the TOS Enterprise, and was a very poor ergonomic design. The earpiece was the saucer section, but the part where the neck of the ship meets the secondary hull dug into my cheek something fierce. I might always remember that, but there are entire people that have been scooped out of my memory thanks to a fever I had when I was eighteen. It’s okay to laugh.
I remember hearing one other girl call in. She was probably about my age and she described how she auditioned for her school’s cheerleading squad. The cheer performance was rated by audience applause, and not one single person clapped for her. She had to give a weak “thank you” and walk off the stage with what was left of her tattered dignity. I remember thinking how awful that was for her, and that I thought she should win, but I knew it was a random drawing and really, it was out of my hands by that point. I don’t remember a single other kid who called into that contest. I just remember that girl.
Here’s something – I vaguely remember one of my adults expressing some trepidation about allowing myself to be labeled “Most Unpopular” and that I might be opening myself up for even more ridicule than I was already experiencing. I vaguely remember thinking that they had a good point, and they probably weren’t wrong, but the chances of me winning were so slim that it just wasn’t going to matter in the end.
But it turns out that the chances of me winning were 100%.
Friday morning came. Both of my adults were already at work. The other kid that I grew up with was still upstairs in bed. I probably would have still been in bed too- awake, but lazily snoozing and half-assedly listening to the radio program had I not been wound so tight with anticipation. I was downstairs, fully dressed and guarding the phone like I had a make-or-break job interview.
The time of the drawing arrived.
I heard the kid upstairs listening to the radio.
As the DJs bantered one of them mentioned that they hoped the girl who failed her cheerleading audition would win.
The phone rang.
And I heard the kid upstairs fall out of their bed.
Then, I answered the phone and I was on the radio.
I remember precisely nothing else
So, I guess you could say that I won, but it never really felt like it. I felt bad about it right from the jump, because I agreed that that other girl should have won. Kids didn’t like me because I couldn’t shut up about Klingons, and Vulcans and Androids- oh, my!- This poor young lady had experienced humiliation on a level that not one single person- let alone a pre-teen girl- should have to endure.
From that moment on I always regretted not asking if it wouldn’t be possible for me to give the prize to the other girl. One of my adults used to make me feel a lot of guilt if they thought I wasn’t appropriately appreciative of a gift, so I was terrified of seeming ungrateful on such a public forum. And in the quarter-century of hindsight that I’ve built up around it, I know now that it wouldn’t have been a kindness. In hindsight, I took a bullet for the unseen kids that identify with The Losers Club. I took one in the gut for The Goonies.
There were several prizes for winning “The Most Unpopular Kid” contest. Most of them were promotional type things I don’t remember and I probably never took advantage of. One of the prizes was a modest shopping spree at a higher end retailer than I would have been accustomed to but can’t recall the name of. There was also talk of one of the morning show interns pretending to be my cool, college boyfriend and showing up to eat lunch with me in my school’s cafeteria. This never came to pass as I assume someone somewhere realized this was a crime. This was about when the sex offender registry was established, and no one wants to be first on that list.
This is actually where the story gets the most problematic, and the most difficult to tell. This is soooooooooo embarrassing, but I’ve pooped myself three times as an adult. (How dare you judge me?!) And let me tell you, when you’ve pooped yourself THAT many times, you will find you don’t give much of a shit about anything.
So, here we go.
The main prize for this contest was a week’s worth of rides to school in a limousine. A stretch limousine. Yeah. Pretty. Hot. Shit.
Let me take this opportunity to remind you that this was a RADIO CONTEST that occurred ENTIRELY ON THE RADIO that many, many, many people listened to. I don’t know whose fucking idea this was, or why I was ever stupid enough to play along with it in the first place. For whatever imbecilic reason, I was not to tell anyone that I had won a radio contest. I was tasked with coming up with my own story on why I was getting rides to school in a luxury automobile and why my style had suddenly stepped up from jeans and Star Trek t-shirts to name-brand designer jeans and Star Trek t-shirts. I was never to admit that I had won a radio contest that was on the radio. I was told to lie. I’m sure if I raised any objections, or if I just refused to do it, which I feel I would have been well within my right, the matter would probably have been dismissed and forgotten. But little mentally ill me didn’t know. So, little mentally ill me made up a VERY big lie.
I told everyone that Leonard Nimoy was my great-uncle, several times removed. For those of you who have precisely zero Star Trek education, Leonard Nimoy was the actor who played Spock, who aside from Captain Kirk, is one of the most famous and recognizable (and many would say beloved) Star Trek characters. I told people that he was my distant relative and that in a fit of distant-uncle-doting he had arranged for a limo to take me and some friends to school. It seemed like the perfect ruse. It explained the rides to school AND my love for Star Trek. I guess I thought if the other kids thought I had a reason for my obsession that they might be a little more understanding, and maybe, just maybe, they would let me have it. They would let me like it. They would let me like me.
But this was a radio contest that was on the radio, and not one person bought that steaming pile of Gorn shit. But I was a mentally ill twelve-year-old who would never even consider contradicting an adult, so I leaned into that cover story really hard. How hard? Every fucking morning on the way into school, I had to use the phone in the limousine to call into the radio show and on-air (ON AIR!) try to describe the excitement of the commute. Then I would be dropped off in front of my school in the mentioned limousine, and THEN, I had to turn around and tell all of my teachers and all of my classmates that no, that was some OTHER girl you just heard on the radio. MY UNCLE SPOCK got this limo for me.
Perhaps this comes as little surprise, but winning “The Most Unpopular Kid” contest wasn’t exactly a boon for me. It didn’t help matters that one of my adults made me a t-shirt with iron-on letters that said “I LOVE LIMOUZINES.” (Yes, I see it.) But it was my adult who made me feel bad about gifts, so refusal to wear it was out of the question. Oh, fuck, and now that I think about it- the little iron-on letters were red, so I was wearing LITERAL SCARLET LETTERS around my school, inviting and inciting all the ridicule there was to be had. I felt like I deserved it.
I actually don’t remember a lot of it. The brain tries to protect itself, I guess. I threw away my journal from that year. It was painful. It was miserable. It was isolating.
Years passed, as they do, and the Universe offered me some tickle of kindness by allowing me to quietly sweep the whole radio contest under the rug. No one brings up the whole mortifying thing again. Not my adults and not even the other kids at school who seemed to revel in my discomfort. Maybe they were embarrassed for me, too. So, I got to pretend that the whole thing never happened, which I think we can all agree is pretty much the best case scenario for this dumpster fire. No one ever mentions it again. Until…
This is a longer story for another time, but when I went on my first date with the man who is now my spouse, I made the other kid that I grew up with (now an adult, of course) come with me on the date. (Please don’t judge me, I was nervous.) Since a couple of decades had come and gone, perhaps the other kid thought it was okay to break out this old gem of an adolescent anecdote on a first date. My date (now spouse) was regaled with the tale of how I entered a radio contest and described my unpopularity to a very (VERY) large audience and bold-faced lied to my entire school that Spock was my uncle. I think the other kid probably thought it was funny to watch me squirm like a bored toddler in church in front of my date. I figured I’d never hear from him again. To my surprise, he spoke perfect Klingon to me and asked me on a second date. He told me later that he knew he was going to marry me when he heard that stupid story. I walked down the aisle to the opening theme from Enterprise, because it had been a long road. (GETTING FROM THERE TO HERRRRRREEEEE! Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
I don’t think that radio program ever held that contest again.
Maybe I should have left this story under the rug where I kept it. But “girl wins Most Unpopular Kid Contest and grows up to practically become a recluse”? That’s the kind of story I would eat with a spoon, and I guess I feel like I owe the Internet one after the hours I’ve spent reading True Crime.
Look, I don’t necessarily think that there is anything special about me as a Trekkie. I don’t think I “bring anything to the table” of the fandom, so to speak. But I guaran-damn-tee you I’m the only fan that got rides to school in a limo because of it.
I’ll take that latinum now.
The Timid Trekkie 