Extraordinary*: *The True Story of My Fairygodparent, Who Almost Killed Me, and Certainly Never Made Me a Princess - Hardcover

9780385736497: Extraordinary*: *The True Story of My Fairygodparent, Who Almost Killed Me, and Certainly Never Made Me a Princess
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
Jennifer Van Der Berg would like you to know that the book ostensibly written about her—Born to Be Extraordinary by Eileen Codlin—is a bunch of bunk. Yes, she had a fairy godparent mess with her life, but no, she was not made into a princess or given the gift of self-confidence, and she sure as hell didn't get a hot boyfriend out of it.
Here's the REAL scoop . . .

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:
Adam Selzer was born in Des Moines and now lives in Chicago, where he writes humorous books for young readers by day and runs ghost tours by night. (If you can find two cooler jobs than those, take them!) He is the author of I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It, The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History, Andrew North Blows Up the World, I Put a Spell on You, Pirates of the Retail Wasteland, and How to Get Suspended and Influence People, and he is just famous enough to have a page on Wikipedia. Check him out on the Web at adamselzer.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
One

I think "Jenny" must have had a second job holding up convenience stores. Take it from me, you do not earn enough money teaching piano to buy a Prius.

It's true that I taught piano, but my real car, the Jenmobile, was an old powder-blue thing that looked like it couldn't decide whether it was a sedan or a station wagon. I bought it at an auction for two hundred fifty dollars, and I probably overpaid. There were over three hundred thousand miles on the odometer, it had a weird smell that I could never get rid of, and it stalled more than a six-year-old at bedtime.

When it stalled on the way to school that fateful November morning, I patted the dashboard and said, "Come on, baby. It's just a few more blocks."

Sometimes that got it to start back up right away. This time it didn't.

It almost always started back up if I just gave it five or ten minutes, but the heater wouldn't come on when the car was stalled, and there was freezing rain coming down that morning. I wasn't about to sit there in the cold, so I put on the flashers, braved the sleet, and ran down Cedar Avenue to McDonald's for a cup of coffee.

That was where the story began.

When I stepped inside, a gruff voice called out, "Hoo hoo!" and I turned to see a scruffy guy sitting at a table wearing a tattered overcoat and a bent fedora.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

"Anyone ever tell you you look like Grimace, kiddo?" he asked.

"Who?"

He flashed me a goblin grin and stood up. When he did, I saw that he was hunchbacked, and couldn't have been more than four and a half feet tall. His curly brown hair--what I could see of it under his hat--must have been at least 50 percent grease.

The little weirdo hobbled up to a sign on the wall with all the characters from the McDonald's commercials and pointed at Grimace: the big, fat purple guy who looked like a talking eggplant or something.

"All that purple you got on, kiddo," he said, in a growly voice that made it sound like he was gargling whiskey. "You're the spitting image!"

For a second I was too dumbstruck to say anything.

He was the one who looked like something made by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. And he was calling me a big, fat eggplant man.

"Dick," I said.

He kept grinning at me as I slunk away from him and walked up to the counter.

My purple coat made me look fat. That was all. It was a big coat. I knew I wasn't the skinniest person in town or anything, but I was not shaped like an eggplant.

"Don't mind him," the woman at the register whispered. "He's been here every day lately. And when we close, we see him sitting in the parking lot across the street, smoking cigars."

"What a freak," I said.

"And when he gets a burger, he eats the whole thing. Like, the wrapper and everything."

I looked back over at the guy. He was back to sitting at his table, pouring some red liquid from a bottle in a brown bag into a teaspoon and slurping it up. I assumed it was not grape juice.

He was not the kind of guy you expect to see in Iowa. Not in suburban Des Moines, anyway. Maybe out in the smaller towns. There are plenty of weirdos out there. I ought to know--my town used to be a small town before it got absorbed into suburbia, and it was a regular freak show.

"Maybe you should call the cops," I said. "Are you sure he didn't, like, escape from an asylum or something?"

"No!" the weirdo shouted from his table. "I didn't."

I blushed and probably shivered a bit. I hadn't thought he could possibly hear us.

He put the bottle away, looked out the window at the strip malls and sleet, and started singing a song that went "Bang, bang, Lulu, bang away strong . . ."

"Well," I whispered, "you could at least get him on public drunkenness."

"Believe me, we've tried." The woman sighed. "But he passes the test every time."

When I left, I gave the guy my dirtiest look for his Grimace remark, but he didn't acknowledge me. He just kept singing to the window.

As I walked back to my car, I imagined three creative ways to murder him for calling me fat: dropping heavy rocks on his head; carving him into a funny shape with a chain saw; and tying a rope around his feet, swinging him around above my head, and throwing him clear to Omaha.

Then I poured my coffee into the gutter, put the empty cup on the ground, and stomped on it.

I liked to break things in those days.

Now, don't get me wrong--I wasn't some violent maniac or anything. All things considered, I was fairly well adjusted. I didn't even kill bugs if I could help it.

But up through the end of my junior year, my workload was about eighty hours per week, between school and various extracurriculars my parents made me do to pad my college applications. The only way I stayed sane was by reading a whole lot of Shakespeare (which I swear makes you breathe better) and squeezing in an hour or two a week to hang out with Jason and Amber, my best friends.

Still friends and Shakespeare couldn't keep me from getting stressed out now and then, and nothing relieved stress like breaking stuff.

Little porcelain angels from the dollar store were the best. Man, do those things shatter.

But at the end of junior year, I got early acceptance through a special program at Drake, which is sort of the Harvard of Des Moines. The extracurriculars and volunteer work and advanced classes were no longer necessary, so I gave myself a much lighter schedule for my senior year. Breaking stuff was hardly a part of my life anymore.

I was expecting this to be a really good day. My math class would be stuff I'd learned years ago. I could snooze through English while people read out loud from The Canterbury Tales at a rate of three words per minute. Debate would just be listening to the underclassmen argue about whether the new T-shirts should say "We Kick Rebuttal" or "We're Master Debaters."

And in drama, I'd just be relaxing while the cast rehearsed The Music Man. I was working props, a job that so far required me to do nothing more than sit on my butt and watch the rehearsals.

But the day started to fall apart the minute the Jenmobile stalled, and it only got worse from there.

In addition to being told that I look like a giant eggplant by a pint-sized, burger-wrapper-eating freak, I realized later that morning that I'd left my lunch sitting on the kitchen table.

Then I slammed my fingers in my locker.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Buy Used

Condition: Good
SHIPS FROM USA. Used books have... Learn more about this copy

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.

Destination, rates & speeds

Add to Basket

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780375983580: Extraordinary: The True Story of My Fairy Godparent, Who Almost Killed Me and Certainly Never Made Me a Princess

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0375983589 ISBN 13:  9780375983580
Publisher: Delacorte, 2011
Hardcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Selzer, Adam
ISBN 10: 0385736495 ISBN 13: 9780385736497
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Irish Booksellers
(Portland, ME, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: Good. SHIPS FROM USA. Used books have different signs of use and do not include supplemental materials such as CDs, Dvds, Access Codes, charts or any other extra material. All used books might have various degrees of writing, highliting and wear and tear and possibly be an ex-library with the usual stickers and stamps. Dust Jackets are not guaranteed and when still present, they will have various degrees of tear and damage. All images are Stock Photos, not of the actual item. book. Seller Inventory # 26-0385736495-G

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
US$ 14.74
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Selzer, Adam
ISBN 10: 0385736495 ISBN 13: 9780385736497
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Better World Books
(Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: Very Good. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. Seller Inventory # 486596-6

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
US$ 15.98
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Selzer, Adam
ISBN 10: 0385736495 ISBN 13: 9780385736497
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Better World Books
(Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 486595-75

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
US$ 15.98
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Selzer, Adam
Published by Delacorte Press (2011)
ISBN 10: 0385736495 ISBN 13: 9780385736497
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
ThriftBooks-Atlanta
(AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.97. Seller Inventory # G0385736495I3N10

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
US$ 16.08
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds