We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarassingly, A True Story

Josh Sundquist, the first-person narrator, is the only consistent protagonist in his memoir of dating misadventures. Following a life-threatening cancer diagnosis at nine, Sundquist had to have his left leg amputated from the hip and to alternate crutches with a heavy prosthetic leg. As his confidence grows, he relinquishes the prosthesis and accepts that he will accomplish activities without it. Given the frugal way his Christian parents have raised him, Sundquist dresses “like a model for Goodwill,” a charity store (231).

Fulfilling a childhood dream, Sundquist becomes a Paralympic ski-racer. Further, he excels in school, given his aptitude for science and math, while his extroverted personality and sense of humor enable him to be a motivational speaker of such demand that a group funds his ticket to the Miss America pageant and the $2,000-per plate banquet the night before. Additionally, his strength of character becomes apparent when he challenges his rule-mongering conservative parents’ ideas and scores himself a place at public high school.

However, while Sundquist has much to be confident about, he cannot help feeling that his disability isolates him from his peers. To counteract this uncomfortable difference, he sets up a stringent set of “Rules of Being an Amputee” which inhibit him from ever talking about his condition and his subsequent physical and emotional needs (19). Still, as his motivational speaking career gains traction, he begins to open up about the challenges of being an amputee, even with his love-interest Sasha.

His underlying feeling of being inferior to people without disabilities gets in the way of his love life when he delays making advances on the girls he is interested in, and gives up pursuing a girl at the first obstacle because he divines that she has already rejected him. In fact, at the end of his investigation Sundquist learns that “the problem had been with my believing there was a problem,” rather than with any aspect of his body or personality (317). His investigation into his dating failures was an attempt to control the uncontrollable sphere of emotions and relationships through gaining concrete facts about why girls rejected him. However, in the end, he can only rely on self-reflection and self-knowledge for a satisfying answer.