The road less traveled is paved in rhinestones

Growing up in the Imperial Valley I felt like none of the other kids ever appreciated my status on the pageant boy circuit.

Misunderstood has been a running theme throughout my life, not just potential entrance music to Prince Charming USA 1984, where I captured the title of Supreme Mr. Sunshine in the ballroom of the Courtyard Marriott in Orlando, Fla.

You can see it on YouTube somewhere. I had full spirit fingers in effect and the cutest little pair of rhinestone-studded chaps, working that grand ballroom stage to Ms. Cyndi Lauper’s “Boyz Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Those were good times. Yet those joys, over and over, were short-lived, because I was misunderstood.

I always knew I was different. While the other boys and girls played dodge ball and jumped rope, pretending to be superheroes or firemen, I dreamed of show business, I dreamed of being Arnold from “Diff’rent Strokes,” or Mike Seaver from “Growing Pains.”

Instead of playing touch football, I pretended I had a learning disorder, only for it to be solved and overcome in 20 minutes, in front of a live studio audience.

Then it happened; the answers to my prayers. My ticket out of the fluorescent hum of institutional normalcy came in the form of the megawatt stage lights of a Nickelodeon sitcom, a forerunner of the “iCarlys” and the “Suite Life of Zack and Codys.”

While shaking my moneymaker at Lil’ Boy Wonder 1985 in Bristol, Conn., I was discovered by a casting agent from Nick. She was feeling the sass I was throwing down to a Mr. Peanut-themed tap-dance number to Taco’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” and approached me and my mother after the show.

Of course I’ll be the star of “Oh, No You Didn’t,” Nick’s take on a hip-hop-influenced white urban preteen from the mean streets of South Boston sent away to a snooty boarding school in New Hampshire. It was like a cross between “The Facts of Life” and “Lord of the Flies,” only no one had to die over the last chocolate milk in the cafeteria.

It was a magical time — making money, blossoming sexually and growing into a pimply preteen under the white lights of the Nick soundstage, getting chunky at the craft service table, going wild on the Kids’ Choice Awards.

You bet your butt I was Rising Star of the Year 1986. Holla!

But alas, I was misunderstood. Hollywood, or rather, Burbank, quickly fell out of love with me and “Oh, No You Didn’t,” and after two whirlwind seasons, I was left a broken shell, the dying embers of a child star.

I couldn’t return to El Centro, so I did what any kid in my position would do — I returned to the boy pageant world. Now 12 years old, I entered the journeyman/masters division, getting back in pageant form with a little performance-enhancing rosy cheek implants and developing a pretty serious addiction to my Bedazzler.

The next thing I knew I had fallen hard, partying every night with the rest of the pageant boys, amped on Shirley Temples and dressed from head to toe in acid wash denim and chambray full of tiny multicolored sequins. I was a full-blown addict, strung out on caffeine and crystal … appliqués.

By my 15th birthday I was spent, burned out, over. I craved the kind of quiet, normal life I had run from screaming ever since I was 8 years old.

But I didn’t know how to live. What were my choices? Do I become Kirk Cameron, a religious nut job, or do I become Todd Bridges, an ex-con junkie nut job? Neither sounded very attractive.

What the hell, I had always been misunderstood anyways, what are a few more bad choices as long as they keep me in the spotlight?

That’s when I found twerking. That’s when I found Miley, my soul sista. Maybe you caught us on the VMAs the other night doing our thing. She was the one warming up the crowd, I was the guy in the bear costume stealing the show.

Together, we’ve been misunderstood ever since day one. That’s our — my — story, and I’m sticking to it.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Aug. 30, 2013.