I'm with Stupid by Geoff Herbach Read Free Book Online

you’ll see stuff you really like,” Gus said. Then Gus, eighteen-year-old boy wonder, gave me some tips on how to behave. He did the job Mother Jerri hadn’t.
    ***
    Stanford Visit
    Okay. This is true:
    It is really, really beautiful in California. Hugely. That’s good.
    First, the driver took me around San Francisco. I’d asked to fly in there instead of Palo Alto when we’d made the visit plans because I’d hoped Aleah would go with me.
    San Francisco.
    Hills and old homes and big pointy parks in the middle of these awesome neighborhoods. I got an iced tea in this coffee shop with giant old-fashioned movie posters on the wall. I think the coffee girl was actually a little man in a dress. I’d never seen anything like it.
    Second, this fog rolled in while we drove to Palo Alto. I watched it curl around giant hills.
    Third, Stanford. What a place.
    On the campus tour, when the tour guide talked, I nodded and listened. She didn’t try to grab my business. (She was very cute, but I respect the fact she didn’t try to grab my business.) She took me into this giant reading room in the library, where there were old books and leather chairs. That’s what I wanted to see.
    When the coaches knocked on my room’s door, I looked them in the eye (Gus told me to) and shook their hands. (Thanks, Gus.) This worked. They didn’t squint at me. This is what I should’ve done at the other schools (except Not to be Named maybe).
    And, yes, I went to a party with players. It was right after their game with Cal-Berkeley, and they’d won and people were pretty psyched. There was a lot of high-fiving and fist-bumping, which I enjoyed. We had a lot of beer. Actually, they had a lot of beer. I had a little, which I hadn’t done at the other schools. It tasted terrible, but it definitely calmed me down a lot immediately (unwound me), which turns out not to be a good thing for me to know about beer. And when I talked about stuff I like, I found some people.
    A few players didn’t just fist-bump me but had actual things to say. I got into a long conversation about comedy and Louis C.K. with the second-string kicker, Sean McDermott. He said the show Louie on FX is an anti-narrative version of Seinfeld .
    Here’s my brain: Whuh? Anti-narrative? WHUT THUH FUG? But I nodded and thought, Smarty pants like Gus. This guy is the man.
    And then there’s completely awesome: the next morning, I played Frisbee with a couple of real students on this big green lawn. I’d asked to stay on campus (again, Gus’s suggestion—“No hotel TV, dickhead”) instead of in a hotel, and I stayed in this ivy-covered guest house and the Sunday morning was blue-skied and beautiful and I wandered out onto the grounds, which were awesome…And the Frisbee dudes! Incredible! They did these wicked, jumping catches, and they told me that there were three different Ultimate Frisbee leagues on campus.
    Then, after they told me I’m awesome (I am a good Frisbee thrower and catcher, and I have a great deal of speed, of course), they said they were going to have some beers and lie out in the sun and asked me to come with, which I couldn’t do because I had some more meetings. But, man, I liked these guys. I love Ultimate Frisbee. These dudes hugged me when they took off. I seriously thought I’d cry tears of happiness, but I didn’t, which is probably good because that would’ve been weird.
    I love the Stanford campus. It was really, really good.
    Okay, yes, in the afternoon, I met with the running back coach, who looked a lot like the other coaches at other schools because he wore those gut-buster coach shorts pulled halfway up his stomach and a white polo shirt with a Stanford tree on his boob and he asked me about my football goals.
    â€œDo you want to play pro ball?” he asked.
    I shrugged and I could tell he was sort of confused by me, but I don’t think he