Happy People Are Annoying

by Josh Peck

Well, you all know how these things go, nine months and copious amounts of hot croissants later, there I was, born at New York Hospital, a solid thirteen pounds, eight ounces. Just kidding. I was a svelte seven pounds, thirteen ounces and have been actively working to get back to my birth weight ever since. All the nurses couldn’t stop talking about how lean I looked in a onesie, trust me.

I have good memories from childhood too, of course, I grew up with a deep awareness that I was loved, decent, cared for, and blah blah blah, but FAT, very very fat. How fat?

Being overweight, especially in the nineties before the antibullying, body-positivity era of today, invited a lot of commentary and critique. I want to say something here before I go any further, today IS better. I don’t mean to make light of body positivity, it’s important and anyone who today feels more comfortable in their skin than they did when the only standard of beauty was a supermodel, I applaud you. For too long we walked around seeing beautiful people in all shapes and sizes that literally had no representation and today it’s drastically better. But being overweight when I was overweight was different.

Imagine being a sensitive, powerless kid who develops this habit that brings them comfort and peace, a coping mechanism to keep the world and their feelings at bay, but at the same time distorts their body, inviting teasing and criticism, which wounds them, and the only salve they know to ease that pain is to eat more. Holy crap, that’s a cycle.

Wearing this magical tunic, I no longer resembled a gigantic muffin and now looked more like an overstuffed bag of bread. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better and I felt better. So I wore it, every day, for five years. I was wearing SPANX Men’s, a corset, on national television, at 290 pounds, in five million homes, every Sunday night.

Jews love to come together and share in the overall theme of Judaism, which is, “They tried to kill us, we lived, let’s eat.”

Throughout my life, television has been my best friend, my babysitter, my teacher, and, most importantly, my escape. I left it on to feel like someone was there, I fell asleep to it, so the room never got dark.

becoming an actor felt as close to physically jumping through the screen as I could get. I felt indebted to television, like working for the hospital that cured your cancer.

I was a walking TV Guide, I knew all the shows on every channel except for Home and Garden because we neither had a home nor a garden. When hipster friends of mine talk about getting rid of their cable subscription or even worse, their television, I think, Are you out of your Carhartt-wearing mind? What are you supposed to do with yourself?

There was another actor on the show, Drake Bell, whom I got matched up with a lot. We were great together, an undeniable chemistry. He was the perfect straight man to whatever crazy shit I was doing, and we started getting to that sweet spot onscreen where we could finish each other’s sentences.

Drake and I sort of became this unstoppable force and before long we were literally in every scene together. It made no sense because, like I said, we couldn’t have been more different. Drake liked the Beach Boys, I liked the Beastie Boys. Drake liked Mexican food, and for a thirteen-year-old weighing 220, Mexican was literally the only food I would turn down.

Our names would become synonymous with each other forever. It’s a long life but there’s certainly a chance that Drake & Josh will be the most noteworthy thing either of us ever do.

This perhaps could explain why over a decade after the show ended, the world went insane when I got married and didn’t invite Drake to my wedding. Now when I say insane I mean it in its most literal sense, in that people were “in a state of mind which prevents normal perception.” People couldn’t fathom that we’d only seen each other a handful of times since the show ended; they insisted that they had just seen us together,

Similarly, when Drake got into legal trouble, people ran to get my opinion. They thought I must have a take on this person I had spent so much time with, when in reality, it had been years since we’d talked and even longer since we’d seen each other. Which is why alongside everyone else who doesn’t know Drake, I was upset by the inexplicable events that unfolded in his life.

“Oh um, no thanks, I’ll pass on the schedule one narcotics.” Come on, Peck! You’ve been waiting for this moment your entire life and you answered like an undercover cop with Tourette’s?!

The speed at which the right circumstance presents itself tends to be quick when you’re ready to do bad things,

A warning to potential drug abusers near and far, past and present, current and in training. If when you ingest narcotics, you feel more like yourself than when you are sober, when the feeling is so comfortable that you can’t think of why you’d ever want to feel another way, you, my friend, are screwed. Drugs lifted the pain of existence so well that I mistook being high for being alive.

then there would be the whisper of an issue, the hint of trouble, and I would just bail. Better I leave you before you leave me, in fact, let me show you how good I am at leaving and how little I needed you at all. Usually this would leave the girl contemplating what went wrong. “He said he wanted Chinese, I said I was in the mood for Thai, and then he just left?” I just wasn’t capable of enduring the natural conflicts that arise when you’re in a relationship. They weren’t necessary growing pains for me, they were harbingers of more bad to come.

One day I was tooling around Facebook, using it for its intended purpose, to spy on people’s lives, not to spread disinformation, the way it is today,

We don’t always get the amends we deserve, but maybe we give it to ourselves when we put an end to the behavior.

When you’re angry, everything is personal and nothing is random.

But if physics is right and every action has an equal and opposite reaction, it’s no surprise that I found myself, in that moment, completely alone. I mean, my mom was there but she doesn’t count. I had done such a good job of protecting myself that I had successfully insulated myself from everything the world had to offer, good and bad.

Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, they transformed. Josh Peck? You best BELIEVE I’ll be transforming.

This was no Planet Fitness, my friends, this looked like an Amazon warehouse dedicated to GUY SHIT. There were swords hanging from the walls, people deadlifting six hundred pounds, I felt like I was inside the Rock’s mind. I walked in and was greeted by two former US Navy SEALs, Logan and Dave. Navy SEALs. The most elite fighting force in the world and Josh from Drake & Josh. Same thing.

by August I was the number one person on Vine, overtaking Harry Styles with 3.5 million followers. And while Harry will always be an icon and have a lower BMI than me, I hope to one day bring this up to him as I gaze at his perfect bone structure whilst his security has me removed.

I think twice about everything at a minimum and three or four times just for good measure.

I wish I could time-travel to thirteen-year-old chubby Josh and tell him, “One day we’re going to be able to pass for John Stamos’s offspring, so don’t worry so much, and also put down that fifth slice of pizza while you still can.”

Think you can be funny for more than six seconds?” It was a good joke and also made me think, Uncle Jesse has seen my Vines?

Nothing good in life can be maintained without practice.

“Let me ask you this, what are you willing to let go that stands between you and happiness? The obvious stuff is easy, that anger you’ve been holding on to, that resentment. But what about the things you think are assets? That relationship you think you can’t live without, that job you think defines you, can you let go of that? Because, if you’re really serious about getting happy, you might be forced to let it all go, to know you can be okay without it.

she taught me the true meaning of family, that no matter what, family doesn’t leave. You could get in fights, you could be imperfect, you could even go to bed angry. It didn’t matter because family doesn’t leave; we could figure this out right now or a week from now but it doesn’t change the fact that I’ll be here when we do.

And then I heard a voice. My father’s voice. Just kidding, that’d be ridiculous, I never even met the guy, how the fuck would I know what he sounded like?

“Once you stop caring, that’s when things will start happening, you just have to not care.”

“You’ll probably get everything you ever wanted. It just won’t be in the way you expected.” He paused a moment and then added, “Actually, you’ll probably get what you wanted, but by then you won’t want it anymore.”

thank you for reading my book, Mom, and also, can you please make Rice Krispies Treats more often because even as a man in my thirties, they still bring me absurd amounts of comfort.

God, I want to wrap this thing up for you in the most psychically reassuring bow right now. I’d love to send you off into the world with some new insight, some sense of purpose, that feeling of “Look out, world, not only do I READ BOOKS but also I WORK on myself!”

The hard times are here to teach us, and the good times are to remind us what we’re fighting for.

Here’s the last thing I’ll say: follow me on Instagram. No. Here’s the last thing I’ll say: it wasn’t supposed to happen for me like this.

JOSH PECK is an actor, comedian, and I guess an author now. Podcasts, social media, speaking engagements blah blah blah.