Justin Bieber (7 page)

“Not like that.”

“No. Not like that. But you’re okay.”

“Geez,” I mumble as I walk off stage. “I used to think hockey was dangerous.”

Nothing ever got my pulse racing (in a good way) like hockey. Well, nothing except Beyoncé, but that wasn’t until I was twelve or so. Then, all of a sudden, it was like I opened my eyes one day and noticed that the world is full of beautiful girls, and I’ve had a hard time thinking about anything else ever since.

When I was twelve, I left French immersion school and went over to Northwestern, a public middle school in Stratford. Chaz and Ryan and I had all moved up from the house hockey league to the travel league, and Grandpa used to go with me on the bus to the away games. We’d get to the game and play our hearts out, and on the way home we’d either be wired from winning and create more havoc than ever, or we’d be weary and discouraged from getting our butts kicked and end up getting into fights.

All the players would sit at the back of the bus, and all the parents would sit up front, not wanting to know what was going on back there. Of course, what was going on was a lot of guy talk. We were all completely fascinated with girls, freaked out about the way we were changing, and, more importantly, freaked out
about the way the girls were changing, and of course, we were all clueless idiots who didn’t know what to do with any of that.

I had a great advantage in that I had lived in girl world all my life. My mom and I had talked about stuff pretty openly, so maybe I understood a little bit more than the average guy about how girls work. I wasn’t afraid to talk to girls, hang out with girls, look at girls and well, you know, flirt with girls – but I also had an idea of when not to talk to girls, hang out with girls, look at girls and flirt with girls.

Some guys ended up hurting a girl’s feelings or making her mad, because they were working too hard to look cool. Not me. My mom had drummed into my head the difference between confident and cocky. I tried hard to stay on the confident side, and I wasn’t always successful. Sometimes, I probably came off as cocky, but I tried to balance that by actually being a nice guy. A certain amount of success with the opposite sex comes down to the simple concept: don’t be a jerk. You don’t have to work hard at pretending you care about a girl’s feelings if you actually do care – not just about girls, but about people in general.

In the video for “One Less Lonely Girl” – which was a lot of fun to make, because they cast this gorgeous sixteen-year-old girl opposite me – the storyline is that this girl drops something at the Laundromat (don’t get excited, it’s just a scarf), and I send her on a treasure hunt to get it back. Somebody called it “the musical equivalent of a chick flick” and I didn’t immediately get that they meant it as an insult. They dissed this part where there are some puppies at a pet shop, and I was, like, “What? Who doesn’t like puppies? And, more important, who thinks pretending to not like puppies will make them more attractive to girls?” They also thought the lyrics were corny.

I’m definitely open to suggestions. Maybe something like:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense: I’m the lame one, and what really turns a girl on is a puppy hater who doesn’t care about her feelings. Maybe if I get with that program I could someday achieve that critic’s level of success with the ladies. Oh wait, I’m not a bitter old man.

Let’s continue...

Back in middle school, most girls in my class were taller than I was. The last thing I wanted to do was give them another reason not to go out with me, so it seemed like a good idea to just be a nice guy. I also figured I’d keep the music thing on the down-low and stick with something I knew I could look cool doing – playing sports.

Guys don’t engage in nearly as much drama as girls do at that age, but, when we do, look out. Heads get punched. Some people need to feel big, and the only way they can is to pick on somebody who’s smaller. Unfortunately for the bullies, my dad was a former professional fighter who used to take me to his training sessions. I quickly got a reputation as someone not to be bullied even though some kids still tried. I think I learned from an early age that although I was smaller, I shouldn’t pay attention to my size or let it stop me from going for something I knew I could achieve. I had nothing to prove to those guys, just as I have nothing to prove to the haters who try to tear me down now. I’m not a fighter by nature, but, if I believe in something, I stand up for it. If somebody talked trash about my friends or my mom, I’d let them know that was not cool. If somebody shoved me, I shoved back harder.

One time, an epic fight got organized off the school grounds. I don’t remember what it was about or how I got sucked into it, but a bunch of people were involved and a bunch more were taking pictures and videos of it with their cellphones. Somebody posted their video on YouTube, for whatever reason. I guess it never occurred to them that teachers would see it. That’s the thing about YouTube. You never know who’s out there. That can be a good thing or a not good thing, depending on the situation.

Anyway, nobody got seriously hurt, but there were a lot of scrapes and bruises, and the video made it look like something out of Mortal Kombat, which we all thought was pretty awesome until school officials got POed about it and started busting people who couldn’t sit there and deny that they were part of it, because, well, there they were on camera. (Apply that lesson to your own circumstances in any way you find helpful.)

Canadians are a scrappy bunch in general, but I was never a big fighter. My dad always said he did enough fighting in his day for both of us. I preferred to compete on the basketball court or slice and dice them with my hockey skills. I was a lot smaller than most of the guys in the hockey league, and I definitely wasn’t playing Forward on the basketball team, but none of them could keep up with me. I knew I’d never be as tall as they were, but I could move faster and play smarter. I would try to skate circles around them or steal the basketball right out from under them.
That’s another thing Grandpa always told me that you can probably apply to your own life: “Make the most of what you’ve got.”

Anyway, I tried to steer clear when anything uncool went down at school. I was getting into enough trouble on my own. Nothing major. Class clown stuff mostly. Outside, I’d be showing off on my skateboard, kicking a soccer ball around, or just stirring things up with Chaz and Ryan, and it was hard to turn that off inside the building. I’m one of those people who have a lot of energy. If I got in trouble at school, it was never for being mean. It was for laughing. Or making someone else laugh. Or dancing in the hallway or drumming on my desk or humming in the library. Basically, I got in trouble for being myself, and that didn’t seem fair to me.