The time Larry David made me cry.

Elmo, I feel your pain.

Larry David recently made headlines for throttling Elmo on live TV while promoting the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. So it seems like this is a fitting time to share my one and only Larry David story. At least, I’m 99.97% sure it’s a Larry David story.

Let me preface this by saying that I think the guy is hilarious. I loved Seinfeld and I love Curb Your Enthusiasm—although I have to be in the right mood for the latter. There are times when the edge of the show’s humor is so deadly sharp, and Larry’s behavior so boorishly cringe-inducing, that it actually stresses me out.

Most of the time, though, I’m all in.

There was a time, however, when that brand of humor made me incredibly uncomfortable—specifically, when I was in middle school: self-conscious, awkward, oversensitive.

Like many twelve-to-fourteen year-olds, I was convinced that the entire world was laughing at and judging me at all times. I was also convinced that I was so uncool and gawky and lame that I sorta kinda deserved it. So, when sarcasm or teasing was lobbed my way, even when it was just meant to be playful, not cruel, I took it hard. And I could never think of a good comeback. (THAT has definitely changed. Come at me. I dare you.)

Decades later, I can still remember, in vivid detail, incidents from that era in my life when I felt like I was the butt of the joke. One such instance was the time I was at my friend Lauren’s house in eighth grade, and her aunt came over, accompanied by her new boyfriend (or maybe he was just a friend at that point; I don’t recall).

“You have to meet my aunt’s boyfriend,” Lauren said. “He’s really funny.”

And so, I was brought into the living room, where Lauren’s parents and older sisters, her aunt, and her aunt’s boyfriend—a gangly, balding guy with big glasses—were watching TV.

“This is my friend Jane,” Lauren said to her aunt and her boyfriend, who sat side by side on the couch.

“Hi,” I probably said, definitely very awkwardly.

They hello’ed back, and there was some talking or laughing or who knows what. Then, Lauren’s aunt’s boyfriend said to me, “Sorry, sweetheart, what did you say your name was?”

“Jane,” I said, pleased that I was of interest.

“Could you move, Jane?” he said. “You’re blocking the TV.”

The room erupted in laughter.

I moved out of the way, and then stood there, not knowing what to do with my hands, trying to smile and be a good sport, while my face burned and I held back tears.

Like I said, I was very sensitive at that point in my life. But that guy—I mean, he was kind of an asshole to do that to a 13-year-old girl he’d just met, in front of a room full of adults, just to get a laugh. Right?

Anyway, I never forgot it.

Lauren and I drifted apart in the years that followed, but we were always friendly, and never lost touch. Lauren’s older sister, Julie, was an aspiring actress—in fact, we shared a stage in the high school musical, Anything Goes, my freshman year—and I remember hearing through Lauren at some point that Julie had gotten a small part in an episode of Seinfeld, which their uncle was somehow connected with.

It wasn’t until a few years later that it fully registered that the uncle in question was, in fact, the creator and producer of the show, and the inspiration for one of its characters.

And it wasn’t until a few more years after that, in the early 2000s, when I started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm with my husband, that I realized that the uncle was, in fact, Larry David. I did some Googling, and confirmed that David’s first wife, Laurie Lennard, was, indeed, my friend Lauren’s maternal aunt.

But it wasn’t until several years after that that it all came together—that I realized that the gangly, bespectacled man who had humiliated me in the living room of Lauren’s parents’ house in Connecticut in the 80s, who had made my little thirteen-year-old heart implode, and who had, for years, been emblematic to me of how painfully awkward my middle school years were—was….it had to be….Larry fucking David.

Larry David told me to move because I was blocking the TV.

Larry David made awkward, brace-faced, terrible-permed me feel like a pathetic little loser in front of my friend’s entire family.

OF COURSE HE DID!

It was the most Larry David thing ever!

I can just imagine the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode:

Cheryl: "Really, Larry? Do you have any idea how sensitive teenage girls are?”

Jeff: “She was in front of the TV! That’s a big bowl of wrong! But… if you could apologize, just to smooth things over. Just a quick ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s all. If you could just do that…”

Susie: “You’re an asshole, La. You were an asshole to that poor girl, you’re an asshole to my kids, you’re an asshole to me, you’re an asshole to everyone. FUCK YOU, LARRY!”

I actually reached out to Lauren not too long ago and told her the “you’re blocking the TV” story, and asked if she could confirm that it was, in fact, her Uncle Larry who had razzed me that day. She didn’t remember the incident, of course. But she said, “Yeah, that sounds like him.”

It absolutely does. So, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

But I must say: as humiliating as it felt when I was thirteen, I now actually feel sort of honored to have been at the receiving end of David’s trademark dickish behavior. I mean, how many people can say that they experienced, firsthand, the assholery of a celebrity whose whole shtick is being an asshole?

Elmo and me—we’re members of an elite club. Of course, Elmo got an apology.

I’m still waiting for mine.

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All posts on Jane’s Calamity are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

P.S. The countdown is on! The paperback of The Society of Shame drops on March 12. But right now, you can get the hardcover for less than the paperback! (I don’t generally love sending folks to Amazon for books, but that’s one hell of a deal…)