If, years later, you find a ballad or a poem you wrotein high school for a crush, or kept a journal or diary where you chronicled life?s mundane details, you?re almost sure to be horrified at the emotional intensity of it and surprised by how much effort went into creating it.
David Nadelberg knows this feeling well. In the late 1990s, he found a letter in a shoebox he had written to a high school crush.
“Let’s be honest, it was more an intense, creepy infatuation,” he says, laughing. “Ultimately, what I did was write her a cover letter to her about myself.”
For whatever reason, he never gave her the letter.
Nadelberg and his roommates reveled in his humiliation and the letter was forgotten. Until now. That letter and many other mortifying moments from people from all walks of life are chronicled in “Mortified,” a book that opens the door to embarrassing and otherwise forgetful moments in all of our lives.
“The idea behind this project is valid,” Nadelberg says. “It is a book about misfits, but those misfits weren’t always unpopular.
[In one entry,] I think you can still kind of see a misfit just trying to fit in.”
As far as picking favorites, Nadelberg says that while he doesn?t think one mortifying moment is more humiliating than the rest, just different, and that all entries juxtapose who we were to who were are.
“I do like the pieces where they take the reader on a journey through the person’s life who is sharing it,” he said. “This book is sort of a blueprint on how we became the messed-up neurotic weirdos that we are today, but also [how we became] the marginally mature people we are today.”
Nadelberg also believes there?s therapy in looking into our pasts, and before the book, a stage show was born. In early 2002, he was so into the idea of mortifying moments, he helped to create a show dedicated to it. The audience ate it up. And why wouldn?t they?
“The audiencebegan relating [to the stories],” he said. “After the first terrifying five or six minutes, I thought, ?We?re on to something.? Comedy is really an important part of [the project] and I encourage anybody to share, whether it be on stage or page or on our Web site, people can share the shame.”
Nadelberg adds that he believes there is great personal value to digging up something from your past and sharing it, even if it?s with one person. And shining a light on some of the most angst-filled times of our lives ? childhood through high school ? can provide great comic fodder.
“I refer to ?Mortified,? ” he says, “as where art meets archeology.”
?Mortified?
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Author: David Nadelberg
Price: $14.95
