How to Ruin Everything

I d been sitting cross-legged on the floor for story time one day, my grasp of the language only a few months into kindergarten delicate, my attention drifting. Catarina was, like many other Buena Vista teachers, an optimistic, young (but at the time, to me, very old) woman, the tendrils of her unshaved armpits creeping out from her colorful Mexican sundress. The dress fascinated me the darkness underneath, so vast and mysterious. Everything was big- ger then. And after Catarina banished me from class, the hallway swallowed me too, endlessly quiet except for the echo of my foot- steps and my pounding heart. The principal reasonably wanted to know what possessed me to crawl under my teacher s skirt.

¿Por qué, Jorge? ¿Por qué?

Because I

Jorge, no, the principal cut me off.  En español.

Quería ver lo que hay ahí abajo.

It was simple: I wanted to see what s under there.

Over Christmas break in second grade, my parents sat my brother and me down at the same dining room table at which I would contemplate house-stealing six years later, many of its battle scars yet to appear. Just from the stiff silence in the room, the way they d staged us across from them, I felt an ominous rot in the pit of my stomach. Secrets hung in the air, consequences waiting to descend on us. I knew this emotion well: the feeling of being called to the principal s office.

We hadn t done anything wrong, they told us. On the contrary, this was fabulous news. They d found a great new school for us, Alamo, much closer to our Richmond District house.

I hadn t thought of it as anything more than a funny story when I d told my parents about Buena Vista s recess playground drills how one whistle meant we were lining up to go back inside, two whistles meant earthquake drill, and three whistles meant to lie flat on your belly on the schoolyard asphalt, separated from the public park on Potrero by a chain-link fence. No kid ever got hit by a stray bullet, but once in a while our teacher s back

would stiffen when we heard a loud pop! coming from the park.

You ll love Alamo! they insisted. How could you not, with a school motto like Be a Friend!&rd

there every night for a month. Which you might have to, in order to process the fact that a guy who looks like he's twelve just wrote the best debut essay collection of the year." 
Adam Mansbach #1 New York Times bestselling author of Go the Fuck to Sleep

"He reminds me of myself, only a better writer than I can."
Rhys Darby, Flight of the Conchords

When George Watsky raps, the quantity and quality of his words and concepts often flow so quickly that you can only hope to let them wash over your consciousness and bathe in their essence, because it's impossible to stop time and live appreciatively in each individual moment. Thankfully though, in this collection of his writings, you can do just that, because that's how reading works. You can examine every drop of Watsky's kindness, thoughtfulness, self-awareness, curiosity, and adventurousness, seeing how he is continually and/or continuously growing as an artist and a human, and you will too."
Myq Kaplan, comic featured on Conan, Last Comic Standing, and The Late Show with David Letterman

"How to Ruin Everything is laugh-out-loud funny, painfully honest, and subversively sincere. Watsky speaks boundlessly and insightfully about the life of a creative person. It is instantly relatable, clever, sharp and observant.
Jonny Sun, creator of the popular @jomnysun Twitter comedy account and MIT doctoral candidate

"George Watsky does again what he does best: attaches disarming, unparalleled wit to the mundane, making meditation of the routine and human. Everything you've come to expect from Watsky the rapper and George the poet is housed in this brilliant and unmatched collection of essays. His unique approach to rhythm is buoyed by his precision of idea and economy of language An instant classic."
Chinaka Hodge, author of Dated Emcees