Back by popular demand!
That’s not true. No one has demanded it. It’s just something you say.
But some people mildly enjoyed the last “Dear Diary” post so here is a little follow-up.
And yes, Mom. I used aliases.
November 15, 1980 – 12 years old
Today I almost got hit by a car. I was on my roller skates and went down a driveway pretty fast out into the street and the car didn’t see me at first and just missed me. I was so scared. I can’t believe I wasn’t killed. So just in case I die soon I decided to make a will:
To my mother and father: I leave everything in my scrapbooks and all the pictures of me I have so that they can keep their fond memories of me.
It was pretty presumptive to assume their memories of me would be fond ones. Ah, I guess. I was a pretty good kid.
To my sister: I leave everything I own, which is all the games and toys we played with together so that she might remember me. I will always remember her.
Brings a tear to your eye that I would remember my only sibling, doesn’t it?
To my Grandparents: Anything left over, because I love them too.
After giving my sister everything I own, “anything left over” wouldn’t be much. But hey, it’s the thought that counts.
Also, when I die I promise to contact all of my family and friends and tell them all about Heaven.
I promised. And I meant it. I remember thinking that everyone else who had ever lived and died just wasn’t trying hard enough to contact their friends and families from the Great Beyond.
It really burned my ass because I truly believed they were all stone-cold slackers.
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November 29, 1980 – 12 years old
Tomorrow we are going to put up our Christmas tree. I’m so excited, I can’t wait!! (Oh, and by the way the 52 American hostages have been in Iran for 392 days now.)
I’m getting presents soon! (World War II is over).
I’m getting presents soon! (They’ve discovered a vaccine for polio).
I’m getting presents soon! (Americans landed on the Moon).
Christmas (and current events).
Priorities. Gotta have priorities.
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December 28, 1980 – 12 years old
My Mom told me about the birds-and-the-bees today. Gross.
First she asked me if I knew anything and I said “No!”, but she got the wrong idea, because I already know everything there is to know.
Ohhhhhh dear GOD I remember that day. The day every kid dreads. The day every PARENT dreads.
It is just a dreaded day overall.
No one wants to hear it and no one wants to talk about it. But there it was staring me in the blushing, queasy face.
“The Talk” never, ever, ever, EVER looks like this.
I had just come home from a slumber party at a friend’s house, and I swear to God I just knew it was going to happen that day. I walked into the house and my sister and Dad were suspiciously absent.
My Mom was sitting in the den doing some cross-stitching or something (maybe subconsciously of something phallic – I don’t know – just to work herself up to it) and I knew it was coming. It was a coordinated attack.
I tried to sneak past her but she said “Hey, come here. Let’s talk.”
I froze, my tongue stuck out of my mouth in a dry heave and my eyes rolled up past my eyebrows and into the back of my brain.
In the name of all that was Holy, what more could she teach me that the after school special-esque/Tampax-sponsored menstruation movies they show you in 6th grade PLUS the movie “Sooner or Later” with Rex Smith hadn’t already taught me??
Nothin’. That’s what. Nothin’!
Yes, folks. He was 17. She was 13. 1-3. What the WHAT? I was never much into blondes. But he did make me want to take guitar lessons from a babe-a-licious, kind of androgynous, man/boy.
My Mom did a fine job in the end. She really did. She’s the best.
Even so, through no fault of her own, I have a vague recollection of blacking-out after hearing each of these words pass my Mother’s lips:
- sperm
- excitement
- ejaculate…and
- lovemaking
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September 2, 1980 – 12 years old
Well I’m in Junior High now. 7th grade. A lot happened over the summer. After John, I liked Jim. What happened was I told this one girl that I liked Jim but I shouldn’t have because she has the biggest mouth in town. So she told her brother Dave and Dave used to be Jim’s best friend so of course he told Jim I liked him.
“…Take it, MacDonald…”
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July, 1981 – 13 Years old
Finally I’m a teenager! I can’t believe it! What a great day. I got my own room, a clock radio, a gold necklace, a cake and then dinner! I think I like my room best of all though. Now I have all the privacy I want.
1. Apparently I felt it was very nice and super-special that my parents fed me on my 13th birthday. I don’t remember food being doled out as a special treat reserved only for landmark days, but perhaps I don’t remember because of the memory loss induced by severe malnutrition during the other 364 days of the year.
2. It seems that I was actually trying to decide on this day which was the more awesome gift: a clock radio OR my own bedroom (in which I no longer had to sleep with my little sister). Hmmmm. Choices, choices.
That clock radio was awesome, though. It was digital. And the numbers were blue.
And as bright as the face of the Sun.
But not so much this kind of sun…
As this kind of sun.
It took me three weeks to figure out how to lessen the supernova brightness on that stupid-ass clock.
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September 2, 1981 – 13 years old
8th grade is pretty hard. And don’t think I’m feeling sorry for myself. (Even though I am).
I couldn’t fool myself or keep a parenthetical secret from myself. I was my own worst best-friend.
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August 26, 1981 – 13 years old
I am starting to gain a little weight. I usually weigh about 106 lbs, but yesterday I weighed 110. Today I exercised though and by 10 pm I weighed 106 lbs again.
I am highly skeptical of this entry. My idea of exercising at that time was doing some cutting-edge leg lifts a-la those soft-core porn (I’m sorry…I meant legitimate work-out videos) they used to air on Showtime; the ones where the women were all either intertwined with each other and licking their lips and stuff, or very creepily into…themselves.
So unless I was sweating it out in the wrestling sauna at the old high school, sigh, I did not drop four pounds in eight hours.
110 pounds. Egad. I kissed that bitch goodbye a long time ago.
Alright, I’m including this one just, cuz. Seriously. Come on. (Skip to about 1:08). Yessss. So very, very aerobic.
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February 28, 1985 – 16 years old
My sister and I have been planning for a while to get my mom a message recorder. The cheapest ones we’ve seen are like $70. We always plan on getting big things for presents and then we end up with no money, and people get no gifts and everyone is sad.
How about a nice scented candle? Maybe some earrings? A homemade, moist and delicious Duncan-Hines cake from a box? No way. She birthed us and it was either the moon or nothing for my Mother.
A 30 lb answering machine costing a week’s pay from me and a month’s allowance from my sister – or nothing.
Better to make her and everyone else we knew sad on their birthdays with no gifts at all than to get them something shitty and cheap and yet personally thoughtful.
THAT’S how much my sister and I loved my mother and the people around us. That’s how we rolled.
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March 12, 1985 – 16 years old
Nothing much happened today. Unless you want to count the fact that he smiled at me.
I remember that day. That was a great day.
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March 13, 1985 – 16 years old
Last week went great, this week is terrible. I’ll probably fail my chem test tomorrow. Oh well. Life goes on.
Sure. Yeah. Life goes on. Who cares. So what. I could see the bigger picture. Wise beyond my years, knowing success or failure was in my control and ready to accept the blame if failure should come to pass. Ho hum. Life goes on.
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March 14, 1985 – 16 years old
I did fail my chem test! Shit. I have no time to study, or do ANYTHING, or see my friends because of this stupid play I’m in!
See, where I went to high school they physically forced you to act in these plays that sucked up all of your study time and energy and made you chronically unavailable to your family, friends and boyfriends.
Way to man-up, Blamey Blamerson.
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July, 1985 – 17 years old
Well I’m 17 today. It’s the first time I’ve been home for my birthday in a long time. I went downtown with some friends (which my parents didn’t like to begin with) and then I came home 45 minutes late so of course they were PISSED. They told me I only care about myself and that I screw around and keep pushing and pushing them. They were over-the-top mad. So ridiculous. Me and my parents are beyond hope.
I had forgotten how awful my parents were to me. I should have gone through the emancipation process as I had planned shortly after turning 15.
Were they dumb? Didn’t they remember no kid had cell phones then (it was 1980freaking5…hello??) and that a teenage girl should be allowed a minimum of an hour grace period on her birthday curfew even with no notification of any kind that the grace period will be enacted?
On the drive home via Westbound I-55 I remember very distinctly looking at the city from the passenger side and thinking just how beautiful it was and what a great time I’d had.
And then it occurred to me just how fucking dead I was going to be when I got home.
Eh. Yin and Yang, my friends…Yin and Yang.
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Lilabell
hippielib 