Cartoon Memoirs: Face Value

Genre(s): Humor & Memoir

Welcome to Doodle Bin!

This edition is something special, as it contains this publication’s first-ever story narration. If you’d like to listen, click the video below. If not, the text version of the story is right underneath.

No matter which method you choose, I hope you enjoy the story! It’s a silly one that really happened.

- Matt

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Narrated Version:

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Text Version:

I heard a lot of weird things while working at a middle school.

Most of the time, it was random, little thoughts that fell out of the kids’ heads, but there was one phrase that came up again and again with alarming frequency.

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I first heard it from the shy, quiet kid who had to whisper it to me.

Then, it came from the loud kid who lacked the muscles to whisper.

Pretty soon, kids in every classroom were saying the same thing about me:

"You look like Ryan from The Office."

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There was just one problem: We look nothing alike! Pictured below is a hyper-realistic, highly detailed sketch of Ryan from The Office.

And now, here’s one of me.

Actually, that might not have been the best example— but the point is we look nothing alike!

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But, really— who was I to care? The middle school and I were now thousands of miles apart. I was living in a college town in France, a place where nobody could tell me I looked like an American sitcom character.

Over there, Ryan from The Office was not on anyone's mind. Being in the most amorous country on Earth, the people around me had other things to think about.

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And when I saw two cute girls come zooming towards me on the street one day, I had other things to think about too.

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The two of them clearly had somewhere to be. They were schlepping heavy suitcases and tearing up the sidewalk with some high-octane speed-walking. The gap between us was getting smaller and smaller…

Until, just as we were about to pass each other, they stopped in their tracks so that the particularly cute one could tell me something.

Man, I thought it was love at first sight.

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“-ou -oo- -i-e -ya- --o- -ee o--i-e”, she said. Or at least, that’s what she would’ve said, if the conversation were in English.

She spoke French in a low voice. I have to admit, it was kind of hot— but I had no idea what she was saying.

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“Uh… pardon?”, I asked.

“You look like Iyanfum Zeofeece,” she repeated with a bit more clarity. I still didn't catch everything she said, but that last part sounded like a name.

What I still didn’t understand though, was why she stopped to tell me that Iyanfum and I looked alike. This girl and I were both college-age. Maybe she thought we shared Iyanfum as a classmate? Or did she think that Iyanfum and I were related?

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Then it hit me. What if she had a crush on this guy?! Maybe she thought I was his brother and that I could help her get close to him. I ran a quick thought experiment and found that—

No! The evidence was undeniable! She had to have a crush on him!

Eurgh. So much for love at first sight.

With a sigh, I said to her, “No, I didn’t know we look alike”.

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From there, we went our separate ways. Once there was a little space between us, I stole a glance over my shoulder, hoping that maybe she’d wanted to talk about someone other than Iyanfum Zeofeece.

I think I heard her steal a glance too.

But man, what a strange name, Iyanfum Zeofeece. Though, for some reason, it sounded oddly familiar. I felt like I'd heard it many times before…

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And then a ‘ding!’ went off in my auditory cortex. My French-Accent-Decipherizer had just finished processing. You know what the particularly cute girl had said?

She had quite possibly caused her friend and herself to miss the bus all so she could tell me this incredibly important information;

This information that, up until then, I thought was only ever said in one place;

“You look like Ryan from Zee Office.”

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Bad joke: ‘collège’ in French means ‘middle school’ in English. I should’ve known that moving to a college town in France meant that I wasn’t escaping being called Ryan from The Office, but dramatically increasing my odds.

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Author’s note:

Creator Commentary as well as EPUB and PDF versions of this story will appear in a future post and will be available to paid subscribers. The EPUB version is based off of the text version above, while the PDF version is based off of the version shown in the narration.

See you in the next edition of Doodle Bin,

- Matt