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  It finally calmed down, and I started to stealthily walk toward the door so I could open it and let the little guy out. But suddenly it leaped back up and flew right at us, so we started screaming and booked it out into the backyard.

  Fortunately, her husband, Josh, was just pulling into the driveway, and we hid behind him as he casually managed to simply nudge the bat out the front door.

  I felt kind of dumb, standing there surrounded by an arsenal of harmless weapons littering the floor, but the look of relief on Colleen’s face was priceless.

  “Come on,” I said, helping her up from the floor. “We’ve got a video to film.”

  CHALLENGE

  #MIRANDASCREAMSFORRICKY

  Tweet pictures of scary-looking bats to Miranda Sings! (Sorry in advance, Miranda!)

  CHALLENGE

  #YOGAFORRICKY

  Invent the most insane yoga position imaginable.

  FAMILY

  Have you ever watched one of devinsupertramp’s videos? Basically he films friends doing crazy extreme sports stunts that look more like special effects than anything a human being would actually be able to do. He was looking for some YouTubers to collaborate with and reached out to me, Jenn, and Jack Baran to see if we wanted to shoot some stunts with him. Heck yeah!

  We really should have paid closer attention to the fine print in our itinerary. We knew that Devin travels all over the globe for his videos, and we were all so busy that when we heard we were going to Utah, it didn’t exactly ring any alarms in our heads. Salt Lake City is less than two hours away from L.A. by plane. NBD, and besides, Jordan, our talent manager at the time, was coming along with us.

  When we landed, we discovered that we then had to drive SIX HOURS to get to a lake where we needed to be! We were annoyed, but knew it was totally our own fault for not asking for more specific details about the trip, so we sucked it up and Jordan rented a car. The drive took us through these really intense mountain ranges, and at first it felt like an exciting adventure, but when we hit the desert and the road just stretched on and on and on it got boring fast.

  We finally arrived at the lake and it was stunning—it looked like a massively long blue snake that wound through sand-colored cliffs for 186 MILES.

  A man in a speedboat was waiting for us at a dock when we parked. We were too exhausted from the drive to make much conversation and as soon as we pulled away from the shore he told us it would be another hour before we reached the houseboat (that’s how huge this lake is).

  At that point we felt too beaten down to even react. We took in the view and checked our phones and about halfway into the trip the man turned around from the wheel and said, “Better send your last texts. In about five minutes you won’t have cell service for the next three days. Isn’t it nice to get away from it all?”

  We immediately began to panic.

  I can’t stand to be offline. It makes me super anxious to an uncomfortable extent. The internet is my entire career! I have obligations on a daily basis that are online and require internet access. I’m constantly worried when I get disconnected that there will be an emergency I need to know about or take care of. Basically, I don’t like being completely cut off from everything when my whole professional life revolves around being online.

  It was much worse for Jenn and Jack that time, though. They both had videos they needed to finish editing for brand deals that were due in forty-eight hours! They’d brought their laptops, thinking they could finish cutting what they needed and then just email them to their sponsors. There was no turning back, though, and they weren’t even able to fire off texts to their managers to tell them they were about to lose service before we went out of range. I don’t think any of us quite believed that there would be no way to get online. We figured there had to be Wi-Fi on the boat or a mobile hotspot or at least that we’d be able to easily reach the shore and find service there somewhere. I tried to push the thought of something terrible happening to my mom and my family not being able to reach me out of my head, and we all decided that we just needed to try to make the most of where we were and have fun.

  We finally arrived at the boat and it was huge—there were three levels, and it was anchored in a cove next to a massive cliff that went up and up and up. It felt like we were on Mars, if Mars had water. And boats.

  There were tons of people lounging around and leaping into the water. Music was blaring and everyone was laughing, and there was a huge inflatable thing attached to the back and floating on the surface of the lake, sort of like a bouncy castle but shaped like a huge tube. Everyone called it The Blob.

  It turned out that the guy who’d driven us also owned the houseboat, and he started going through a giant list of rules about everything that we could and couldn’t touch, and how to properly flush the toilets, and then told us there were no beds left so we would literally have to sleep on the floor outside. That last part was actually kind of cool. We could see a million stars all the way out there in the middle of nowhere. The captain was starting to give off a really bad vibe, though, like he was seriously regretting renting his boat out to Devin and his giant crew.

  We woke up early the next morning and got to work shooting. The Blob turned out to be a human-projectile launcher. I would sit at one end of it, and someone else would stand at the top of the boat and jump down on the other end, which would cause me to go flying fifty feet into the air and then splash down into the water. We got to fly around the cove in water-powered jet packs, and it was all so much fun that we forgot about the rest of the world. At the end of the day Jenn and Jack started to really freak out about not being able to reach their managers to explain why their videos were delayed. We all hated the idea of missing a deadline—we knew how lucky we were to have internet careers in the first place and didn’t want to do anything that might hurt them. It’s bad enough to miss a deadline, but it’s even worse when you can’t send any messages to explain the situation. Their managers were totally in the dark about what was happening and had no way to reach them.

  Devin had gotten so many shots of us that day that we couldn’t really understand why they needed us to stay for two more days. We talked to him and Jordan and asked if we could leave early and they both totally understood. It’s not like we were even getting paid to be there, so it wouldn’t hurt anyone if we ditched. Jordan said he’d ask the captain to drive us back to our car the next morning, and we went to sleep that night totally relieved.

  At dawn, the captain shot us down.

  “I’m getting ready to sell that speedboat,” he said. “I can’t just go adding tons more miles onto it, and that would be an extra two-hour round-trip for me. Not gonna happen.”

  Jordan and Devin were both really embarrassed and apologetic, and we were horrified. We were trapped in the middle of a lake with no way of getting out! It wasn’t even like we could have swum to shore and hitchhiked, because the boat was surrounded by cliffs!

  We could see a few more houseboats bobbing in the water in the distance, and as a total joke I said, “We should go see if we have any viewers on one of those, maybe they’ll drive us back.”

  Before I knew it Jordan had jumped on a jet ski like some sort of superhero and ridden off to find out.

  He struck gold on the first try. There were some kids on board who knew us! Jordan invited them over to our boat and we took photos with them, and then asked if we could pay their parents to drive us back to shore. They did! Devin was relieved for us, and I could tell he felt awful about what a jerk the captain was being.

  When we finally got back to the rental car we drove to a small town and stopped at a motel with Wi-Fi, where Jenn and Jack were able to spend the evening handling their videos. All’s well that ends well, I guess, except for one thing—we were cut from the final video!

  CHALLENGE

  #WATERSPORTSFORRICKY

  Try a water stunt that you’ve never done—think jet skis, surfing, paddle boarding, high diving, even plain old body surfing if you’ve neve
r had the pleasure.

  CHALLENGE

  #LYRICCONVOFORRICKY

  Try to keep up a conversation with a friend in which each of you can only use famous song lyrics and film it.

  HEALTH

  Confession: I’m jealous of a lot of my friends. The ones who can eat whatever junk food they want and never work out and somehow still look amazing. They won the genetic lottery (go buy my song “Lottery” on iTunes!), something I definitely did not when it comes to trying to stay jacked. If I was naturally fit and had a fast metabolism, I’d probably look like Arnold Schwarzenegger circa the first Terminator with how much I work out. As it is, if I don’t work out for a week or two I quickly lose any physique I’ve gained. It’s the reason I’m so hard-core about going to the gym. I can see my muscles deflate overnight if I don’t keep at it.

  I know this might come across as vain, but that’s not it at all. In fact, it’s the total opposite. It has everything to do with my insecurity over cultural body expectations. Women have had to deal with unrealistic standards for decades, and I think it’s gotten pretty bad for guys, too. I can’t turn around without seeing another photo of a ripped, shirtless man promising me that my life would be perfect if I could just have a body like his. It makes me self-conscious and uncomfortable, and I end up thinking that the only way to make those feelings go away is to work out harder, eat even healthier.

  Keeping the motivation up gets tiring, and a lot of times I have to force myself to exercise after a long day. I know that working out and eating healthy is only a good thing, so a lot of times when I’m trying to get the energy up to do it I try to only focus on that aspect, instead of anyone else’s idea of what I should look like. A person’s reasons for working out and eating right should be as healthy as the results that come from doing those things.

  CHALLENGE

  #VEGANFORRICKY

  Make a vegan dinner, post a picture, and describe how it tasted (I promise I won’t be offended if you hate it). If you’re already a vegan, share a pic of your favorite vegan meal and use #KISSMEIMVEGAN instead!

  CHALLENGE

  #UNDERWATERFORRICKY

  Using a waterproof camera, take an underwater selfie—it can be in a pool, a lake, the ocean, a bathtub, the kitchen sink, wherever you want. Just don’t drown.

  RANDOM

  You know how when you were little and still figuring out how the world works the tiniest little thing could set you off on a major tantrum? Like, a Cheerio could fall off your spoon and next thing you know you’re facedown on the ground howling at the unfairness of the universe? No big deal, it’s a normal part of the growing experience. I hope you had smart parents like I did. They didn’t indulge that sort of behavior. They taught me when it was acceptable to get angry and try to overcome whatever it was that was bothering me, and when I just needed to accept a situation for what it was. That’s why I was able to stay so calm and rational when, in kindergarten, a kid split my head open so wide that I still have a huge scar on my forehead today.

  Here’s how it went down: Every day after recess, a different student would get chosen as the Line Leader. The responsibilities included moving to the front of the line and holding the door to the school open so the rest of the class could file back inside. That’s it. My class had a game that we’d always play, in which every time you passed the Line Leader, you had to tag him or her, and the Line Leader had to tag the person back before he or she got inside the door. Nothing major, just a simple tap on the shoulder. Thrilling, right?

  So one day it’s my turn as Line Leader, and we’re tap, tap, tapping away when this kid named Barry comes by and reaches out to get my shoulder. Only he put a little more momentum into it than necessary, and I went flying headfirst into the razor-sharp corner of the industrial-grade door latch.

  I’m not exaggerating when I say blood exploded everywhere. It looked like Freddy Krueger had just taken a swipe at my face, and I can still feel that hot liquid running into my eyes and burning them. But I stayed strangely calm. I listened to all the kids around me screaming and watched my teacher’s face contort in shock, as if in slow motion. Her mouth became a perfect circle and her eyes bulged out of her head like a cartoon. But nothing beat the look on Barry’s face. He was HORRIFIED. I knew he hadn’t meant to hurt me. We were friendly with each other. It was just another playground game gone hideously wrong.

  It didn’t hurt, and now that I think about it I was probably in shock. The entire front of my shirt was drenched red and everyone still had no idea what to do. Thank God my sister Tara happened to be walking down the hallway and saw what was happening. She snapped into action, scooped me up, and rushed me to the nurse’s office.

  You know things aren’t going well when even the school nurse looks like she’s going to faint after getting a glimpse of your face.

  I remember being wrapped up in a blanket and the nurse trying to wipe away the blood, but it had no intention of slowing down. Next thing I knew my mom was there, bundling me into her car and driving me to the emergency room. Good thing, too, because it turned out that I needed thirty-eight stitches.

  Thus ended the era of Line Leader. The school got a big ol’ doorstop to use instead.

  When I returned to school, Barry felt very guilty. He kept apologizing over and over and I had to keep telling him it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t. Sure, the doctor told me that due to the size and depth of the cut I’d have a scar for the rest of my life, but now I love it. It’s kind of cool, and just another example of an imperfection that makes me unique. (Weirdly, Connor has a scar in almost the exact same place!) More important, I knew that what had happened was an accident. There was no point in getting mad. What was done was done and there was no malice behind the incident.

  There are some parents out there who probably would have tried to sue the school for what happened, and that’s what gets me mad. Everyone makes dumb mistakes sometimes, and the idea of punishing someone for that is absurd. It’s called life. Stuff happens!

  CHALLENGE

  #TRAUMADRAMAFORRICKY

  Tell the story of your most embarrassing moment or craziest injury.

  CHAPTER 7

  Grateful

  CHALLENGE

  #ICEBATHFORRICKY

  Do the ice bath challenge with a friend—see who can stay in a tub full of ice the longest. (Be safe and smart, though!)

  FAMILY

  As I’ve mentioned, I was an almost embarrassingly well-behaved kid growing up. I never got in trouble, and I didn’t drink, smoke, or cuss. I’d like to say I was naturally born a good person, but I know that I have my parents to thank for how I turned out. They were strict, but not too strict. They instilled a moral code in me from as early as I can remember and taught me the difference between right and wrong. I remember realizing from a very early age that I should always treat people the same way I wanted to be treated, and that came directly from them.

  That’s not to say I didn’t act out sometimes. I could be a typical bratty little brother to Tara. We shared a bathroom and I used to go through all of her hair products and throw them around or hide them in the dirty laundry. I’d get my Game Boy taken away for a day and that would be the end of it. There were never any screaming matches or slamming doors. On rare occasions I’d act out by saying I didn’t feel like doing my homework. No kid wants to do homework, but I did want to do well in school, so all it took was the threat of being grounded to snap me back into line.

  I know, I know. I sound like the most boring kid on earth. No one is ever going to accuse me of being the face of youth gone wild. I feel like kids and teenagers who do go through a rebellious period are usually just looking for answers about their place in the world, and my parents never gave me any reason to doubt mine. I felt safe and was well taken care of.

  All that being said, I did start to shut them out a little bit around my junior year of high school. When I was younger and got made fun of for the way I talked, I’d always tell them about it and look to the
m for comfort, but once I became a teenager I relied on my friends for that kind of support. I became more reserved and private at home. I didn’t ice my folks out completely or anything, but like any normal teenager, I was much more comfortable talking about personal things like my insecurities with my friends.

  Moving away to college forced me to reconnect. I was so lonely and homesick that I tore down the wall I’d built up around them. (Fine, it was more like a white picket fence.) I called them a lot to moan about how unhappy I was, but they didn’t indulge my complaints. I know that if I had been seriously depressed they would have pulled me out of college, but I think they could tell I was more dissatisfied than anything else. So they told me to just buckle down, get back to work, and stick it out.

  I was a little bit worried when I decided to switch my major to film from pharmacy. I thought my dad might be disappointed that I was dropping out of the field he worked in. Nope. He knew how much I loved making videos so he understood that choosing film as my new major was a natural progression for my life.

  Today, I’m just as close to my parents as ever, but I know how easy it is to take them for granted. I get swept up in daily life and I’ll forget to call one of them back and suddenly realize a week has gone by and I haven’t spoken to either of them. That scares me. Not to sound morbid, but I would never forgive myself if there were some sort of accident and my last words ever to them were, “Can’t talk, gotta collab, byeeeee!”

  Every day should be Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. And Stepparents’ Day, or Legal Guardian’s Day. When you’re a teenager it’s so easy to get swept up in hormones and drama and lash out at them. The next time you feel like taking your fury at the world out on your mom, take a deep breath and ask yourself if what you’re about to say to her is something legitimately directed at your relationship with her, or if you’re just using her as a punching bag. In the heat of the moment it can be hard to tell the difference.