Jacobmu and the Shame I Feel

I love swimming in pools and I love entertaining people. At one point I was able to combine these two passions into one spectacular event that can only be described as the low point of my adolescence.

As an overweight twelve year old there are only so many ways to pass time. Your options are basically narrowed down to eating and finding ways to make people laugh. In the movies, the protagonist is never fat...but his best friend usually is. He also usually has red hair and freckles and provides the majority of the comic relief. I aspired to be that guy. I also aspired to be accepted by my older siblings. In such a pursuit one is subjected to doing things that when you look back on them weren't funny because you made them funny, but were funny because you were fat when you did them.

My older sister successfully manipulated my love for acting and marine life, thereby nurturing the creation of a character that has come to be known as Jacobmu. It is a play on words of the name of the popular Orca whale, Shamu, who regularly headlines at the animal prison known as SeaWorld.

A typical Jacobmu performance included me diving underwater, pushing up from the bottom of the pool and breaching the surface with spectacular grace only to splash back down with a resounding smack. My sister found this hilarious, which pleased me, which made me keep doing it. And then I realized. "I don't think they're laughing with me."

And so, with a shame similar to that felt by a white guy in Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, I retired Jacobmu. I have taken a vow against ever doing any physical comedy involving my weight ever again. Unless I get paid.

While I am extremely ashamed of my Jacobmu phase, nothing compares to the embarrassment felt when I think of the Sharky McSharkington incident, which involved one of these and very little, if anything, else:

I'll let you figure it out.