Bossypants (2 page)

If you’re looking for a spiritual allegory in the style of C. S. Lewis, I guess you could piece something together with Lorne Michaels as a symbol for God and my struggles with hair removal as a metaphor for virtue.

Or perhaps you just bought this book to laugh and be entertained. For you, I have included this joke: “Two peanuts were walking down the street, and one was a salted.” You see, I want you to get your money’s worth.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am all about money. I mean, just look how well my line of zodiac-inspired toe rings and homeopathic children’s medications are selling on Home Shopping Network. Because I am nothing if not an amazing businesswoman, I researched what kind of content makes for bestselling books. It turns out the answer is “one-night stands,” drug addictions, and recipes.

Here, we are out of luck. But I
can
offer you lurid tales of anxiety and cowardice.

Why is this book called
Bossypants
? One, because the name
Two and a Half Men
was already taken. And two, because ever since I became an executive producer of
30 Rock,
people have asked me,

“Is it hard for you, being the boss?” and “Is it uncomfortable for you to be the person in charge?” You know, in that same way they say, “Gosh, Mr. Trump, is it awkward for you to be the boss of all these people?” I can’t answer for Mr. Trump, but in my case it is not. I’ve learned a lot over the past ten years about what it means to be the boss of people. In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. In other cases, to get the best work out of people you may have to pretend you are not their boss and let them treat someone
else
like the boss, and then that person whispers to you behind a fake wall and you tell them what to tell the first person. Contrary to what I believed as a little girl, being the boss almost never involves marching around, waving your arms, and chanting, “I am the boss! I am the boss!”

For me this book has been a simple task of retracing my steps to figure out what factors contributed to this person…

developing into this person…

who secretly prefers to be this person.

I hope you enjoy it so much that you also buy a copy for your sister-in-law.

Tina Fey

New York City, 2011

(It’s so hard to believe it’s 2011 already. I’m still writing “Tina Fey, grade 4, room 207” on all my checks!)

Origin Story

My brother is eight years older than I am. I was a big surprise. A
wonderful
surprise, my mom would be quick to tell you. Although having a baby at forty is a commonplace fool’s errand these days, back in 1970 it was pretty unheard-of. Women around my mom’s office referred to her pregnancy as

“Mrs. Fey and her change-of-life baby.” When I was born I was fussed over and doted on, and my brother has always looked out for me like a third parent.

The day before I started kindergarten, my parents took me to the school to meet the teacher.

My mom had taken my favorite blanket and stitched my initials into it for nap time, just like she’d done for my brother eight years earlier. At the teacher conference my dad tried to give my nap time blanket to the teacher, and she just smiled and said, “Oh, we don’t do that anymore.” That’s when I realized I had old parents. I’ve been worried about them ever since.

While my parents talked to the teacher, I was sent to a table to do coloring. I was introduced to a Greek boy named Alex whose mom was next in line to meet with the teacher. We colored together in silence. I was so used to being praised and encouraged that when I finished my drawing I held it up to show Alex, who immediately ripped it in half. I didn’t have the language to express my feelings then, but my thoughts were something like “Oh, it’s like that, motherfucker? Got it.” Mrs. Fey’s change-of-life baby had entered the real world.

During the spring semester of kindergarten, I was slashed in the face by a stranger in the alley behind my house. Don’t worry. I’m not going to lay out the grisly details for you like a sweeps episode of
Dateline.
I only bring it up to explain why I’m not going to talk about it.

I’ve always been able to tell a lot about people by whether they ask me about my scar. Most people never ask, but if it comes up naturally somehow and I offer up the story, they are quite interested. Some people are just dumb: “Did a cat scratch you?” God bless. Those sweet dumdums I never mind. Sometimes it is a fun sociology litmus test, like when my friend Ricky asked me, “Did they ever catch the black guy that did that to you?” Hmmm. It was not a black guy, Ricky, and I never said it was.

Then there’s another sort of person who thinks it makes them seem brave or sensitive or wonderfully direct to ask me about it right away. They ask with quiet, feigned empathy, “How did you get your scar?” The grossest move is when they say they’re only curious because “it’s so beautiful.” Ugh.

Disgusting. They might as well walk up and say, “May I be amazing at you?” To these folks let me be clear. I’m not interested in acting out a TV movie with you where you befriend a girl with a scar. An Oscar-y Spielberg movie where I play a mean German with a scar? Yes.

My whole life, people who ask about my scar within one week of knowing me have invariably turned out to be egomaniacs of average intelligence or less. And egomaniacs of average intelligence or less often end up in the field of TV journalism. So, you see, if I tell the whole story here, then I will be

asked about it over and over by the hosts of
Access Movietown
and
Entertainment Forever
for the rest of my short-lived career.

But I will tell you this: My scar was a miniature form of celebrity. Kids knew who I was because of it. Lots of people liked to claim they were there when it happened. I was
there
. I
saw it.
Crazy Mike did it!

Adults were kind to me because of it. Aunts and family friends gave me Easter candy and oversize Hershey’s Kisses long after I was too old for presents. I was made to feel special.

What should have shut me down and made me feel “less than” ended up giving me an inflated sense of self. It wasn’t until years later, maybe not until I was writing this book, that I realized people weren’t making a fuss over me because I was some incredible beauty or genius; they were making a fuss over me to compensate for my being slashed.

I accepted all the attention at face value and proceeded through life as if I really were extraordinary. I guess what I’m saying is, this has all been a wonderful misunderstanding. And I shall keep these Golden Globes, every last one!

Growing Up and Liking It

At ten I asked my mother if I could start shaving my legs. My dark shin fur was hard to ignore in shorts weather, especially since my best friend Maureen was a pale Irish lass who probably doesn’t have any leg hair to this day. My mom said it was too soon and that I would regret it. But she must have looked at my increasingly hairy and sweaty frame and known that something was brewing.

A few months later, she gave me a box from the Modess company. It was a “my first period” kit and inside were samples of pads and panty liners and two pamphlets. One with the vaguely threatening title “Growing Up and Liking It” and one called “How Shall I Tell My Daughter?” I’m pretty sure
she
was

supposed to read that one and then talk to me about it, but she just gave me the whole box and slipped out of the room.

“Growing Up and Liking It” was a fake correspondence between three young friends. Through their spunky interchange, all my questions and fears about menstruation would be answered.

“How Shall I Tell My Daughter?”

As I nauseously perused “How Shall I Tell My Daughter?” I started to suspect that my mom had not actually read the pamphlet before handing it off to me. Here is a real quote from the actual 1981

edition:

A book, a teacher or a friend may provide her with some of the facts about the menstrual cycle.

But only you—the person who has been teaching her about life and growing up since she was an infant—can best provide the warm guidance and understanding that is vital.

Well played, Jeanne Fey, well played.

The explanatory text was followed by a lot of drawings of the human reproductive system that my brain refused to memorize. (To this day, all I know is there are between two and four openings down there and that the setup inside looks vaguely like the Texas Longhorns logo.) I shoved the box in my closet, where it haunted me daily. There might as well have been a guy dressed like Freddy Krueger in there for the amount of anxiety it gave me. Every time I reached in the closet to grab a Sunday school dress or my colonial-lady Halloween costume that I sometimes relaxed in after school—“Modesssss,” it hissed at me. “Modesssss is coming for you.”

Then, it happened. In the spring of 1981 I achieved menarche while singing Neil Diamond’s

“Song Sung Blue” at a districtwide chorus concert. I was ten years old. I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day, but I knew from commercials that one’s menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn’t blue, so… I ignored it for a few hours.

When we got home I pulled my mom aside to ask her if it was weird that I was bleeding in my underpants. She was very sympathetic but also a little baffled. Her eyes said, “Dummy, didn’t you read

‘How Shall I Tell My Daughter?’ ” I had read it, but nowhere in the pamphlet did anyone say that your period was NOT a blue liquid.

At that moment, two things became clear to me. I was now technically a woman, and I would never be a doctor.

When Did You First Know You Were a Woman?