Get Over Yourself!

A True Life Story of Overcoming Insecurities and Learning the Lost Art of ChivalryBy Dan Geitzenauer

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Copyright © 2009 Dan Geitzenauer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-8221-2

Contents

Dedication.....................................................................viiINTRODUCTION...................................................................1I. THE BEGINNING-FROM BIRTH THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL.............................5II. IOWA STATE AND THE COLLEGE EARS..........................................15III. THE BIG MOVE AND LIFE'S LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY.....................29IV. CONQUERING INSECURITIES AND LOW SELF-ESTEEM..............................43V. IMAGE-YOU NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE .....................................51VI. SOCIAL SETTING-DON'T BE THAT GUY.........................................59VII. ... TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION-THE FIRST DATE............................67VIII. THE AFTERMATH AND FUTURE DATES...........................................75IX. SEX-MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR...................................................83X. THE 4 C's: HOW TO MAKE A RELATIONSHIP WORK...............................97CONCLUSION.....................................................................111

Chapter One

THE BEGINNING-FROM BIRTH THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL

OK, if you read the introduction, you're probably asking yourself who the hell is this guy and where does he get off thinking that he knows so much? Fair enough, I say; I would be asking the same thing. So let me tell you a little about myself so you can understand where I came from and how I'm the person I am today. I will be frank and honest, and hopefully you will be able to relate to me because my life was just as normal as the next person, with a few exceptions of course!

I grew up in a very small, rural town in Iowa called Fenton. If you've heard of it, I personally know you or know someone who knows you. Trust me, it's that small. By today's standards I think it would fall between a ghost town and a village. The population of the town was between two hundred and three hundred people, and in my school grades K-12 were in one building in the country away from town. Three towns compose the body of the school, and there were about a hundred students in my high school when I attended. There were twenty-nine students in my graduating class. By now you should have a pretty clear idea where I came from.

I was born in 1977 and I have one older brother. My mom and dad are my heroes and idols and to this day still inspire me to be the best person I can be. I grew up with a great group of friends, and we still remain close. I was always scrawny and goofy. I was always considered smart, or you could classify me as a geek. I never felt confident and secure around any of my friends, let alone girls. I have no idea why I was like this, but I guess it was because I was never happy with my self-image. To this day I remember how camera shy I was growing up, and as long as I remember I was always shy around new people, especially girls. To me I was this gangly kid with knock-knees, buck teeth, huge ears, no coordination, and barely any athletic ability. How many of us thought we were like that growing up?

I was always trying to prove myself to my friends because I was very insecure about who I was. I would do things just to try to impress my friends, even if they were wrong; and I ALWAYS spoke my mind and had to have the last word. I was almost always wrong, because I never thought before I spoke. The other great quality I had was that I was ultra-competitive. I always wanted to be right and I always wanted to be the best at everything. This quality did me more harm than good growing up. When it came to girls, forget about it! I had no clue how to behave around them, so I was always the shy, bashful one.

When puberty hit, all hell broke loose. I grew like a weed, and I felt that all of my flaws (which were pretty much everything) got worse; in my eyes I was ugly as sin and had nothing to make up for it. I was completely insecure with who I was, and it was the source of all my self-esteem issues. The only thing I was good at was that I was one of the smarter kids in my class. Every time I had a chance to prove this, I jumped all over it, even if I knew that people were just using me. Most of the time I'd lend my homework to people or let them cheat off me during tests. This was the only way I felt like I was needed, that I was wanted by other people. I also wanted to prove to everyone that I was the smartest and that everyone should cheat off of me!

I stuck out like a sore thumb. If there was a poster boy for insecurity and low self-esteem, I was it. Trust me when I say this: when you have a self-confidence problem, the last thing you want to be is tall. You stick out like no other, and every day I wished I was short so I could get lost in the crowd.

The other thing that I had against me was that while everyone else was buying the in-style clothes, I was stuck with hand-me-downs from my older brother. Also, my family didn't have a lot of money and we didn't exactly pride ourselves on having a high sense of fashion. I never had the fashionable jeans and shoes, and my clothes-coordinating skills were worse than someone who was color blind. I never, ever felt like I fit in anywhere. Now that I look back, it was one of the best things that happened to me, because it taught me something that's really important in life-

"The only thing that matters is that you have clothes on your back, not what's on the back of your clothes."

Thanks Mom and Dad;)

When high school hit, life really sucked. Lucky for me, and I say this with sarcasm, I was a freshman when my older brother was a senior. Of course he had to prove himself around his friends by ridiculing me and picking fights with me every time he saw me in the hallway (we all had a high school bully we had to deal with; mine just happened to be my brother and his cronies). I don't hold a grudge against him; hell, if I had younger brothers, I would have done the same thing. I guess it's the birthright of the older sibling, and unfortunately I was the younger sibling. But it didn't exactly help out my self-esteem problem. Also, during my freshman year not only did I get braces, but also I was the lucky recipient of brand-new glasses! Yep, that's right, four-eyes & metal mouth all at once! Throw in the big ears and zero coordination and my life was a bed of roses! I don't remember how many times I wished that I could just run away and start a new life somewhere else, where no one knew me. Need I say more about my freshman year? It was a year completely devoted to avoiding my brother and avoiding seeing myself in the mirror at all costs.

Like most people, I turned sixteen my sophomore year. And in the great state of Iowa, that meant that I could drive! Well as my luck would have it, instead of picking up my buddies in a nice, sporty new car, what did I get stuck with? The family car! Yep, that's right; an old, ugly, green '81 Pontiac Bonneville. This thing was so big that a Mini Cooper could fit between the wheel base of the car! God bless my parents, though. A lot of people didn't even have a vehicle when they turned sixteen, so in hindsight, I was lucky. Can you begin to picture me and why I had such a low self-esteem?

As high school when on, I finally...