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Teen angst revisited
By Kate | September 15, 2007
So, while we have been moving I found a strange box labeled “Katie’s stuff.” I plopped it in the truck thinking it must be something we overlooked in the last move. Turns out it is a box that was packed up circa 1999 of a whole bunch of junk of mine from middle school and high school.
There were many random odds and ends. The highlight being a group of spiral notebooks covered with clipped out pictures of celebs. These served as my journals in middle school and high school. After high school I stopped keeping a journal almost completely. I had re-read some of my past material, and was mortally embarrassed that my posterity might actually read this banal junk. You can see for yourself why I don’t keep a journal in the following choice selections from the height of middle school, 1994 (these are DIRECT quotes):
4-2-1994
“Today I got an Aerosmith tape called Get a Grip. Is had the song Cryingin it. I LLOOVEEEE that song. I read the book Charley & I finished it today it is sooooo sad. I cried.”
“Today Sarah Lyon asked Mike Parsons to the dance. Isn’t that pathetic. I’d swear he’s a druggie. When Kate told me I seriously though she was kidding. Mike is a LOSER, he has long hair. She doesn’t even have any classes with him. I mean, it’s a casual dance anyway. You don’t have to have a date. There [sic] a bunch of moronic, chronic FREAKS. That should try to get a life know what I mean. If someone asked me that I liked, I would go. But, I don’t think I would like to ask someone.
PS I might wear a dress tomorrow.”
4-29-1994
“I have no classes with any of the ‘cool’ guys. I’m stuck with all of the nerds in accelerated English. It’s sooooo boring. I thought it would be fun but it’s not that fun. But it’s ok.”
Even from this limited sample you can see, I wasn’t usually pondering the mysteries of the universe as a teen. Pretty much boys and clothes. Typical. I think you could just buy a generic 8th grader girl journal and write my name on it and it would be fairly accurate. I also found a paper I wrote my junior year of HS that began with a lengthy quote from an Alanis Morisette song. Yeah. I had hoped to find one nugget of thoughtfulness, one sign that I was a forward thinking teen. Alas, not even a single glimpse that I cared about any issue but my current outfit & whether it was being copied or not. Thus I put and end to the immortalization of my shallow thoughts, to save myself eternal embarrassment.
This gem of a sketch above is from a later journal, I can only assume, is a drawing of cool fashion ideas I had. Sadly it is not labeled. Perhaps I had ideas of grandeur and was considering my own fashion label, “Fly.”
Tagged with: Adventure • aerosmith • celebs • journals • middle-school
September 17th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
oh sweet and heavenly mercy, save us all. I, too, found all of my old journals while cleaning my room. I spent several subsequent days pondering a proper punishment for the life I had lived, and could think of nothing brutal enough. As a sample quote from my journal, I pick one from a page titled “My World in a Minute” with a picture of a globe at the top, which, as far as I could tell, was just a listy list about how totally bad I was. Ahem: “My cousin Kim found out she was totally pre-marital pregnant! Well, she made a serious mistake but I still like totally love and don’t judge her!” Like I said: heaven, send your angels.
September 17th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Oh Charley, now that was some great literature. Did you know they made a movie of it? If you have not seen it, please please please do.
September 21st, 2007 at 1:50 am
I actually saw Mike a few months ago. I’ll pass along your regards.
I remember a line from a journal entry I wrote in high school that sticks in my mind only because of its cringe-inducing false profundity. It went something like, “I don’t think they (my then-social circle) have any idea, or even attempt to consider, what it means to be a human on earth.” Then I wept. Because I do know. What it means. Pain, man. Like, you know?