Fridays with Fenech: Hi, I'm Fenech

By Anthony Fenech, Senior Reporter || January 21, 2011

It’s not French. I’m not French.

I like French fries. I like French toast. I have a friend that grew up in France, and he tells me that French girls are awesome; that they’re so hard, that they’re so easy and that they love American guys. So I guess you could say I like French girls too. And French girls dressed as maids. And French girls dressed as maids with no —

But my last name isn’t French.

It’s Fenech. Fen-plus-ick. Yes, I have been called a dick; yes, I have been called a prick; yes, growing up, kids would put the two together and call me Fendick; and yes, it’s unfortunate that name didn’t stick.

I grew up in a middle-class suburb of Detroit, to parents who long saw this hurricane coming and split up before the sixth grade, leaving me the oldest of three brothers at home and the youngest of everyone else everywhere else, stuck between a rock of wanting one thing and a hard place of wanting everything.

In elementary school, I had a discipline problem. They wanted to put me on Ritalin. Wise beyond my years, I asked for Vicodin.

In middle school, I had an attention problem. They were everywhere. Figuratively. They were growing. Literally. I was doomed. Honestly.

In high school, I combined the two with a bunch of raging hormones, threw an unpopped cherry on top and created the Fenech problem; a sometimes mathematical, sometimes scientific, always theoretical equation of Friends, Females and Fantasy that has yet to be solved.

They wanted me to read “The Scarlet Letter.” I wanted to write a better “Scarlet Letter.” They wanted me to mature. I wanted to explore human nature.

In college, I couldn’t escape my hometown and nearly died. I rolled a car going 80 mph and survived. One year, I hopped on a train, ended up in Chicago and in love with a lesbian. The next, I jumped on a plane, landed in Las Vegas and in love with a thespian.

Now I’m back in college for my sixth year, still haunted by those mushroomed problems from yesteryear.

The discipline problem decided to drink, the attention problem married Aphrodite and the Fenech problem found Facebook.

In elementary school, I passed notes in class. In middle school, I hit puberty the opposite of fast. In high school, I kept a journal about girls and how not one of them was good enough to pass this class.

And now I’ll be here, every Friday; teaching those journals, creeping on girls and taking you for a ride on a provocative Tilt-A-Whirl.

Nice to meet you.