If at Birth You Don't Succeed (6 page)

Andrew was so enamored with it all that he entrusted me with making sure he didn't spend more than two hundred dollars in the gift shop. “Do you think I might be able to fit into this child's astronaut suit?” he asked seriously. “It's only a hundred and twenty dollars and I think I'd wear it a lot.”

We made it out of the museum without Andrew spending his life savings on memorabilia and astronaut ice cream, and got to Sumter in time for dinner. After refueling, Andrew and Aaron headed into town to get the parts for our model rocket while I turned to Facebook to ask my fan page to name the craft. Some of my favorite suggestions were the USS
Annerprise
, the
ZachBuster2000
, and confusingly,
Atlantis
, which happened to be the name of the only other NASA space shuttle not yet retired.

After a week of poolside tanning and my grandma's home-cooked meals, we picked a name that sounded fitting to all of us—the
Low Altitude Rocket Delay Substitute
, or
LARDS
for short. When she was finally finished,
LARDS
was an impressive vessel that had been outfitted with explosive engines normally reserved for rockets twice her size. Andrew prepared to light the fuse as I started the countdown for our live Internet audience who'd be able to witness the spectacle streaming at a whopping two frames per second. The fuse crackled as Andrew ran back to safety and we all tilted our heads toward the sky in anticipation. The engines ignited and
LARDS
was thrust into the air, but she didn't boldly go anywhere. She did, however, burst into flames.

Theoretically, the oversize explosives were large enough to propel this children's rocket out of the atmosphere—but in practice they weighed
LARDS
down, causing her to sputter and twirl like a giant sparkler being thrashed about by a mesmerized kid on the Fourth of July.
LARDS
was no longer in danger of landing on a roof but rather landing on our heads. Ever the hero when sensing imminent danger, Aaron ran backward, tripping over my wheelchair as he tried to save himself.

When the smoke cleared, we found our rocket, which was surprisingly undamaged by the ill-fated flight. Within minutes, we had stuffed her with smaller engines and were ready to give liftoff a second go. Our success rate may have been significantly lower than NASA's, but our efficiency was unparalleled. Shuttle Rebuttal Redux could only be called a success in comparison to the first launch because it didn't threaten to kill us all. In our failure, we had to admit that even if we didn't get to see her launch, NASA should probably take as long as they needed to ensure their rocket was safer than ours.

The day after failing miserably at amateur rocketry, we finally got some positive news from the professionals.
Endeavour
's launch was officially rescheduled for May 16. If we wanted to witness it, we'd have to stall for another eight days in Sumter, but at least there was a timetable. To amp ourselves up, we spent the next week watching the entire series of
From the Earth to the Moon
, a show produced and introduced by Tom Hanks that dramatized the Apollo missions. None of us could resist quoting John F. Kennedy's famous 1962 speech in which he boldly declares, “We choose to go to the moon, in this decade, and do those other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” When we recited this historic and important speech, we made a few changes to suit our own missions. Depending on the day it was “We choose to go to the pool, and drink sangria…” or “We choose to go to the Sonic, before midnight, and get Route 44 Cherry Limeades, not because they are healthy, but because they are good!” But when we finally took a break from fast food, drinking, and swimming to watch JFK's Rice University speech in its entirety, the sheer audacity of what he was saying hit me. Check this out:

We shall send to the moon, two hundred and forty thousand miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than three hundred feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of withstanding heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communication, food, and survival on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat of about half the temperature of the sun … and do all this, and do it right, and do it first, before this decade is out …

Listen to how baller this dude was! We promised to go to space within ten years at a time when computers were the size of rooms and less powerful than a graphing calculator. We went to space back when doctors suggested that if you were pregnant, you should keep smoking so as not to stress yourself out. We hadn't even invented the technology we needed to get to space and we gave ourselves a hard deadline and stuck to it. Nowadays, if there's a budget dispute, our Congress will just pack up and go home for a month. What happened? Hearing those words helped me realize that witnessing
Endeavour
would not just be the grand finale of a cool road trip with friends, but would also honor an era in our country's history, a time when we resolved to make the impossible possible and kept that promise despite the improbability of success.

Maybe the universe heard this bellowing call for progress, because just when NASA announced
Endeavour
's new launch date, things finally started moving forward with
Rollin' with Zach
too. I had my first meeting with my executive producer over the phone and we carved out the format for the show. The new timeline was for me to move out of my apartment in Austin at the end of May and head to LA in early June to start shooting. If everything went according to plan, the timing would work out perfectly. Andrew could still act as my assistant throughout production and we'd wrap just before his first semester of med school would begin if he got accepted. But as I'd learned from my brief exposure to both NASA and network television, just because there was a launch schedule didn't mean things would actually get off the ground.

After almost three weeks in South Carolina, we packed up the van on May 15 and embarked once again for Florida. In an act of sheer commitment and solidarity, Christina had once again flown from Boston to Orlando for a trip that would last exactly nine hours. She hopped in the car and gave Andrew a giddy kiss as we welcomed her back to Florida with the score from
Apollo 13
. We arrived at Cape Canaveral in the dark once again and were led to a far more impressive viewing area suited for an
Endeavour
that now looked like a rocket conjured by a Tetris master rather than a novice. I wish I could tell you that with three hours to kill we watched
Apollo 13
one last time, but the truth is we watched
Smokey and the Bandit II
.

After a quick Burt Reynolds break, we were ready to marvel at space again and decided that our best viewing angle would come from sitting not in, but on top of our Caravan. So, with five minutes to liftoff, Aaron and Andrew hoisted me up like the world's most excited sack of potatoes. All systems were go. The entire crowd fell silent as everyone tuned in to NASA radio. Resting on two thousand tons of rocket fuel, there were six Americans brave enough to trust that this vehicle would not only carry them to space but also bring them home. Thousands of people huddled together waiting to watch
Endeavour
tear through the sky and leave the atmosphere one more time. Andrew took a few final snapshots with his camera and then we locked our gazes on the shuttle.

The countdown began as the mammoth engines roared. We saw
Endeavour
take off before we heard her. A moment later, I learned that in a rocket launch, it's not what you can see and hear that has the greatest impact, but what you feel. There was a seismic rumble that washed over the crowd like a wave, producing a sound so loud that it could easily kill you if you were close enough. It sounded like static or white noise, like the entire Earth was flipping the channels on reality. It was an auditory experience so thunderous that I half expected that whatever signal was producing the environment around us would cut out at any moment and we'd just be surrounded by the stars. Smoke and fire poured down from the rocket boosters as it soared higher and higher, until it was a tiny speck, and then it pierced through the edge of the sky and vanished into a part of the universe only a few of us would ever see.

Slowly, the volume was turned up on the more familiar sounds of a world I understood. We all exclaimed some iteration of the phrase “
That
was awesome!” hoping to find better words to explain how transformed and humbled we were by the experience. But I think “awesome” is the perfect word. It's just that we use it to describe everything now. This wasn't awesome in the way that half-priced margaritas are awesome, or your grandma's
WORLD'S MOST BITCHIN' GRANDMA
sweatshirt is awesome, or even the way that eating a hundred dollars' worth of fro-yo is awesome. This awesome actually inspired awe and created something that rocked us to the core, caused us to question what we knew, and made us appreciate the wonders of the world we couldn't comprehend.

A rocket on a launchpad isn't worth much. To get it off the ground requires equal parts faith, fortitude, and the collective vision to chase a dream into reality. Later that summer, I'd finally have liftoff on one of my biggest dreams. Thanks to Andrew and a production crew, I was able to make good on my own bullish proclamation to make a travel show. We didn't go to space, but Andrew was the perfect copilot as we boldly went across the country, exploring oceans when I surfed, the skies when I went up in a helicopter, and diabetes when I went to a jelly bean factory.

But the two of us were destined for different orbits. Just before we filmed the last episode of
Rollin' with Zach,
Andrew got the news that he'd been accepted into med school. From the beginning of the reality show competition to the end of production on my travel show, I'd gotten to spend nearly a year with my best friend. That fall, he'd be heading off into the stratosphere, doing what he was born to do. I had no idea where he'd end up; I only knew that Andrew was a rocket.

Later this year, I'll finally get to see him leave the launchpad and become a doctor, after twelve years of higher education. I'm sure that when the time comes, I'll only have three words to describe the experience—“That. Was.
Awesome!
”

 

CHAPTER 4

Comics Without Relief

In a darkened high school auditorium, I sit in the spotlight, looking like a kid in his grandfather's suit. Because in actuality, I am a kid in his grandfather's suit. I'm holding a microphone as Gareth McCubbin, the host of the Kenmore West talent show, presides over my marriage to a random audience member. It's the closing bit to my first stand-up act, and I'm getting to know my future bride.

“What's your name?” I say, shoving the mic in her face.

“Meagan,” she says, excited to be onstage.

Before she can say anything else, I yank the mic back and say, “Good enough for me! Let's do this!” eliciting scattered laughter from the crowd.

The whole point of this sham wedding was to get to the kiss and then end the performance by having my new wife hop on my lap, so I could carry her backstage with a wink to presumably consummate the marriage. Pretty juvenile, but I was fifteen, what do you want? As with most celebrity marriages, things went south quickly. Right as we were about to recite our vows, one of the other talent show hosts decided the bit was too long and yanked me offstage before I could get to the punch line. It was awkward. Luckily, there was one person in the auditorium who still believed in the sanctity of marriage, as it applied to high school comedy bits anyway. My friend and wingman Dave Phillips, a scrawny guy with a nerdy exterior who nevertheless inhabited a high social stratosphere in our school, saw that my act was about to crash and burn with no conclusion and began chanting, “Bring back Zach! BRING BACK ZACH!” While I was being scolded backstage by the indignant timekeepers, the whole high school joined in the chant. I wasn't allowed to finish my act that night, but thanks to Dave, instead of just leaving the stage, I was able to leave an impression.

Having a high school auditorium clamor for me was a good feeling at a time in my life when I felt the most isolated and out of place. I missed seventy-three days of school my freshman year. During the month leading up to that talent show, the one thing I'd been able to look forward to were those five minutes when I could be a performer on a stage, and not a sick person hovered over a toilet, violently destroying my esophagus.

My first year of high school marked the beginning of a volatile relationship with my digestive tract. Because I couldn't maneuver in the stalls at school, going to the bathroom required the invasive assistance of my middle-aged personal aide, who would then wait outside the stall until I was finished. As a teenager, the threat of public embarrassment coupled with this surrender of dignity and privacy made the prospect of going to school seem like a recipe for social suicide. This anxiety only exacerbated my stomach ailments, which fed into a vicious cycle that often kept me home. At a time when all of my peers were going through some degree of physical transformation, I was devolving from the social butterfly I'd been all through middle school and retreating to a cocoon of self-imposed solitude. I felt like my body was holding me hostage.

Although I was physically sick during this period of my life, escaping the label of “sick person” was something I'd had to do since the day I was born. Comedy was both the tool I used to convince others I was not sick or different and the medicine I took to heal myself whenever life had me lamenting the cards I was dealt.