Small Legs, Big Teeth: A Prequel of Something Yet to Come

Small Legs, Big Teeth:

A Prequel of Something Yet to Come

Small Legs, Big Teeth:

A Prequel of Something Yet to Come

Kelly Wiesehan

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Kelly Wiesehan

All rights reserved.

Small Legs, Big Teeth:

A Prequel of Something Yet to Come

ISBN

978-1-63676-901-1 Paperback

978-1-63676-965-3 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-068-8 Ebook

DEDICATION

To Dad, who made me a storyteller.

To Mom, who made me tough.

To Ryan, who will probably never read this book, but I want everyone else to know that he is the most badass, adventurous, and fearless person I know, and I probably only wrote this book to say that I’ve done something cool too. Ryan, you are my favorite person. Joke’s on you if you never read this.

And to everyone who has ever called me short. I don’t believe you.

Introduction

This is the best night of my life! I yelled up into the rainbow disco balls in the nightclub in Paris. I danced and sang and toasted my drink to Paris! I had finally made it after years of collecting countless Paris posters and little Eiffel Towers in my bedroom.

Little did I know four hours later, I would receive a call from my mother, awakening me from my drunken slumber and yelling at me to book a flight back home to St. Louis because the President issued a European travel ban.

The best night of my life quickly turned into me walking the streets of Paris alone in the middle of the night—still a little tipsy and with only my duffel bag on me—fleeing Europe as Covid-19 was just beginning to wrap its sneaky fingers around the globe.

Two eerie flights, six glasses of wine, and three concerned customs agents later, I dropped my duffel bag on the floor of my childhood bedroom in Imperial, Missouri.

Try that for a fun night out!

My eyes darted across the room to the stack of diaries piled on the bottom of my nightstand.

Woah, I breathed out, exhausted from fleeing back to America, but also from the surreal realization that . . . I had done it.

I grew up in Imperial, Missouri. I guess I’m still growing up here because I haven’t officially moved out (yet) and my prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed (yet).

Imperial, Missouri is exactly what it sounds like. Middle of nowhere. Unimportant. Irrelevant. It is all of these things, including the former meth capital of the world. It’s about forty minutes South of St. Louis and is just a random spot in Missouri with one Main Street, a Catholic church, a few trailer parks, and lots of scenic, rolling green hills.

I grew up sitting in my backyard with a diary, furiously wracking my brain for ways to get out of Imperial, make money, and see the world. Because Imperial is extremely boring, dull, and lifeless, I became absolutely infatuated with whatever was the complete and utter opposite.

Fame! Lights! Parties! Dancing!

Every single movie and television show I watched took place in New York City or Los Angeles. Those must be where the cool and important people are, I remember thinking. I have to get there. I just wanted (want) to be important and have lots of cool friends and a Nicholas Sparks boyfriend like everyone in the movies. Don’t we all?

When I came home from studying abroad in Europe, I counted nine diaries stacked on the bottom of my nightstand. They had accumulated over the years and now I was twenty-one. There they were, filled cover to cover with naive pearls of wisdom: my coming-of-age stories. There, in writing, was proof of my growing up.

Mistakes. Lessons. Love. Heartbreak. Death. Sex. Religion.

It’s all there—unedited, untouched, and undeniable.

I’ve done it, I thought as I knelt on my floor, wearing the same clothes I wore in Paris twenty-four hours earlier.

I’ve gotten out. I’ve seen the world. I’ve fallen in love—hard—with a Nicholas Sparks boyfriend! I’ve gotten into a Top 20 University. I’ve lived in New York City and worked for NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza! I’ve taken out loans and lost all of my money. I’ve had my heart broken—badly. I’ve made best friends! I’ve lost best friends. I’ve gone to Ireland, Vienna, Budapest, and Paris by myself! I’ve questioned my upbringing, my values, my beliefs, and everything in between.

I’ve stopped believing in God. I’ve had sex. I’ve done drugs! (Not really though. Sometimes I’ll smoke my little brother’s weed with him.) I’ve been to protests. I’ve started believing in God and Buddha and the Universe and science. I’ve made my own money. I’ve worked my ass off! I’ve come back home to Imperial, Missouri due to a global pandemic, and have lived with my family again—something I wasn’t planning on doing, but something I desperately needed.

But I will leave again!

Because I’m only twenty-one, and there’s a lot left to do!

I spread out all nine diaries on the floor and started paging through them. Gasping! Laughing! Crying and cringing!

What good are all of these diaries lying on my floor? I thought. What good are all of these lessons learned and battles won if they can’t be shared?

In the age of social media, where people are posting the highlight reels of their life—vlogging facials, telling you what to buy, who to vote for, what to believe in, what causes to donate to, who to cancel, and curating aspirational, semi-delusional, and potentially insensitive mood boards that make everyone else feel like shit—I’m thinking I can pull back the curtain and show you the real shit.

Because what good is sharing stuff about your life if no one can relate?

When I was having an identity crisis and struggling with heartbreak and losing friends and having a hard time in school, there was no podcast or click-bait YouTube vlog titled Who Am I? Should I Dump My Boyfriend? Should I Change My Major? Is God Real? Am I Crazy or Is This What Growing Up Feels Like?

I want to write a coming-of-age story that’s happening in real-time. I can’t think of a better way to do that than to publish my diary entries and hand over the proof I am growing up, making mistakes, questioning things, and trying to have a good-ass time.

Although it is cringeworthy to read my middle school, high school, and even more recent diary entries, I’ve learned we have to honor our evolution, be open to change, and accept the fact we will always be growing and we will never fit into a singular mold. That’s the best fucking part about all of this! If I’m not throwing this book out of the window in five years, something went wrong because I must not have learned anything!

I am not famous and neither are you. (But if you are, that is very cool you are reading this book. Take me with you!) This is not a New York Times Bestseller about my extraordinary rich and famous lifestyle. (Not yet, anyway!) This is not an autobiography or a memoir because I am only twenty-one and my story is just revving up. This is not a manifesto where I reveal some crazy life philosophy . . . although I could go there. I’m not here to tell you I’ve figured it all out. That would be dumb at age twenty-one . . . and boring as hell. I’m here to say: I know, right?

This is for everyone growing up and wondering what the hell is going on. This is for people who want to be cool and important like the people in movies, but don’t know where to start. This is for people who hear things about feminism and politics from their intellectual friends, but don’t know what it means to them yet. This is for people in the build-up before the bass drop.

This is my prequel, and I have no idea what’s coming next. Neither do you! How titillating! How nerve-wracking! How exciting!

So let’s get this show on the road. In your hands lie my deepest, darkest secrets: my diary entries and some added reflections, of course. Read these secrets wisely, and tell all of your friends.

Peace out,

Kelly Wiesehan

Imperial, Missouri 2020

(P.S. One time, I signed off a cover letter with peace out. I got an interview the next day.)

Live Free or Die

September 23, 2014

Age 15, sophomore year of high school

It sucks living out here. Nothing ever goes on—ever. And I’m stuck here while kids in Kirkwood walk to each other’s houses and all their parents are friends and they all have neighborhood barbeques and shit. They all go to a regular high school like Glee.

But no. I’m stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere, when I could be in New York City at a nightclub meeting crazy people . . . or at least walking to a restaurant with all my friends. Or riding my bike to the park to meet a cute boy or something. No. I can’t do those things. Because I live so far away from everything!

Sometimes I just need to escape. My world feels so small—same faces, same places. It’s moments of claustrophobia, like now, where I picture myself in a big-ass city with millions of people.

Growing up where I am, everything is so far away from me. And I’m only fifteen; I can’t even drive yet. The idea of proximity is almost overwhelmingly exciting to me. The idea of being able to walk to a friend’s house or even just a restaurant. . . . Oh my gosh! I could walk to work too! Wow.

This is why I belong in New York, LA, or even Chicago would do. Possibility lies there! Not to mention, the vast amount of people and parties I could go to. Ah, I just want to be where it all is. You never hear of cool people, parties, and places in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, or wherever. Where do you hear about that stuff? New York. LA.

That’s where I want to be. Right in the mosh pit of things! Right in the midst of chaos. And I’m willing to walk into that alone if I have to. But the exciting thing is that I’ll find people along the way that will be there for me. There’s so many people and places waiting to be discovered, and I can’t wait to do just that.

So yeah. Sometimes I just need to escape. I’m claustrophobic. I’m suffocating. But it won’t last forever.

When I finally get my chance, take a good look at me, because it might be a while before you see me again!

You’ve got to be kidding me, I said when God plopped me down on this earth, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. God laughed that deep, Morgan Freeman belly laugh and POOF—He was gone, and I was stuck in Imperial until further notice.

Ah, Imperial, Missouri. Where do I begin? It’s a love-hate relationship. Imperial is strange because one moment, you’re driving through beautiful tree canopies with incredible views of green hills in the distance, and then you come to a halt at a stop sign and see a yard full of rusted Natural Light cans and a guy in a wife beater smoking a cigarette through his broken screened-in door.

Imperial is about forty minutes South of St. Louis. It’s not a cute suburb with sidewalks and tulips and cute little schools kids walk to and from every day. No. It’s spread out with long, dirt roads, trailer parks, and old barns converted into meth labs. Contrastingly, weaved into all this are some nice neighborhoods nestled into the hills with majestic, breathtaking views.

Some people make the argument Imperial is peaceful and beautiful; calm and serene; open and filled with nature. My dad fucking loves Imperial. I personally find it dull, isolating, disgusting, and lifeless. The winters are the worst. Everything is dead, brown, gray, and silent. There’s nothing to do here—really, there isn’t. We have one or two strip malls with an H&R Block, a Great Clips, and one smoky bowling alley that gives you second-hand lung cancer. Oh, and the tanning salon I went to in high school.

I wouldn’t even call it a small town because that implies a charming and dainty community where everyone is friends and there’s a town square where everyone goes to do their shopping. No. Nobody knows each other. We’re all spread out, lingering in solitude somewhere in the woods, hoping nobody comes to bother us. That’s why people (my parents) move to Imperial—to be alone and unbothered. . . . Or because it’s cheap.

I went to a private Catholic grade school from kindergarten to eighth grade with the same twenty-three kids for nine years. I tried hanging out with people from public schools to have more friends, and because they actually had parties on the weekends. But I was rarely invited, despite how desperately I wanted to be.

When I went to high school—which was a thirty-minute drive away—and told people I was from Imperial, they always made weird faces.

"Where is that?" They’d scoff and crinkle their nose. One time, a girl asked me if I got different radio stations. I was so embarrassed. But we do in fact have some different ones. My friends in high school lived forty-five minutes away. Sometimes I was excluded from group events simply because I couldn’t make it there and back in time for my curfew. I blamed being left out on living so far away from everyone. Even when I had the freedom to drive, Imperial was still trapping me in a tiny bubble.

I grew up sitting in my backyard on the brown, crunchy grass, staring into the abyss, wondering what the rest of the world was doing while I was standing still. The silence was deafening.

But as soon as I stepped foot into my house, chaos ensued. There’s nothing dull and lifeless in the Wiesehan home, let’s get that straight. It’s loud, exciting, rambunctious, expressive, happy, angry, silly: all at once and all the time. It’s a constant emotional whiplash—sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a crazy way.

My dad built our house on top of a hill. It’s a massive glass box. The house is essentially one big room with three stories of floor-to-ceilings windows–seventy-two to be exact. The rest of the rooms are pushed to the side with catawampus dimensions. At night, my dad presses a button and a fifteen-foot-wide screen propels down from the ceiling and a movie theater erupts into the living room. Next to the projector screen is a stage that’s lit from underneath my dad built to host the sparkling white grand piano my grandpa passed down to us.

Across the room is a bar, glistening with suspended gold lights, and a stoned backsplash with pillars on either side of the half-moon granite countertop that spans the entryway of the house. Sunshine bursts through the kitchen,