You know that page-turning series about the trials and tribulations of teenage love? The one that’s not particularly well written, where the main character is whiny, self-centred and not very likeable, and yet you still can’t put the damn thing down?
No, not Twilight, people! I’m talking highschool diaries. My highschool diaries.
Last weekend, I discovered a whole box of them in the shed, marked clearly in my handwriting (“[NDM]’s highschool & uni diaries”) with my husband’s scrawl adding: “+ Rollerblades!”. I should hasten to add the rollerblades were his – as was the exclamation mark – for I do not share his enthusiasm for rollerblading. Oh no, not I.
I randomly picked one up from the box and read the first page:
January 1st 1987
My resolutions for 1987 are:
1. I will do well in my HSC
2. I will have at least two lovers (of over three weeks duration) by December 31st
3. I will no longer be a fool
4. I will keep my room CLEAN
Riveting stuff, right? Before I knew it, I had finished off the whole book and was scrambling around to find the next in the series so I could find out what the hell happened at the Year 12 River Rock and whether or not I got that “fab” skirt off lay-by.
And then finally, three diaries and three hours later, I emerged from 1987, shaken and shocked. And not just because every second sentence seemed to be “I’m shocked!”, for example:
Dad just gave me $80.
I’m shocked and appalled.
I’m also rich.
Also:
[Name omitted] told me in Maths he owned ABBA’s “Arrival” but he couldn’t find it. I was shocked. I mean, sure we all have one album we want to avoid – but the fact was HE WAS LOOKING FOR IT.
There were many reasons I was shaken and shocked. For one thing, it’s a hard thing to read the innermost thoughts of your 16 year old self and all the drinking, snogging, pining and whining that went on. Especially when you then realise that your children are way closer to that age than you are. Three words: Shit. A. Brick.
For another thing, how come I won the English prize and couldn’t spell the word “weird” properly? It’s just not right.
But the thing that shocked me most was this: in Diary #3, I read all about this guy who said he’d “liked” me for over a year (in the way that only high school kids “like” each other), who pursued me rather rigorously, who I snogged at a few parties and agonised (over the course of many, many, many pages) whether or not I wanted to be his girlfriend and who was finally deemed to be “way too nice” and dumped unceremoniously.
It was an age-old story (especially when it came to me and “nice boys”) but here’s the rub: I could not remember him. Not his name, not his face. NOTHING. Even when I looked him up in the Year Book, there was nothing about his photo that triggered a single memory. As they say in the classics: Not a sausage.
Of course, I remember the sleazes and the cads of that year. I remember the boy who I oscillated violently between “I love him soooooo much” and “HE’S A SHIT-FACED FUCK-BRAIN”, sometimes within the same entry (Yes, I was as inconsistent as a Type One Vomit, even then). I remembered stealing a bin from one boy’s house, spray painting it gold and leaving it on the lawn of another boy’s house along with the note “I AM GOLD, I AM WILD. I’M YOUR BIN’S LONG LOST CHILD”. I even remember sending one of the school prefects a postcard that “wisely advised” him to “FUCK LIKE A BEAST!” – although, admittedly, I can’t quite remember my reasons for doing so.
But I didn’t remember this boy. Not at all. And it really bothered me.
You see, when I got married, my husband was adamant we shouldn’t have the wedding video-taped. He said that we would remember the things worth remembering. And at the time, I thought he was right.
But now, reading this diary which documented (in excruciating detail) events that happened 23 years ago, I wondered. This boy seemed worth remembering, even just a little bit. Simply because he seemed like a nice person, totally undeserving of being buffeted about by “Cyclone NDM”.
Of course the bitterest pill of all to swallow was reading it all with the knowledge that Cyclone NDM was to rage on for at least another decade before finally becoming the sweet, wafting breeze it is today. (I just read that bit out to my husband who shouted “Ha!” and then muttered darkly under his breath about women with ‘strong personalities’. I’m shocked.)
Hahaha! I loved reading this. School diaries are hilarious and embarrassing at once. I’m kinda glad I threw mine out a few years ago. The contents contained within were just awful. When I read them before throwing them out, I, to borrow a phrase, was shocked.
I was reading mine with the view of chucking them out afterwards, but felt so bad about not remembering The Forgotten, I haven’t been able to do it yet.
Gads we have a lot in common. I just pray my Mom doesn’t run upon the old school diaries before I do! My friends and I thought we were clever when we called losing our virginities “leaving the coffee house”. I clearly remember writing in my diary, at an age too young to reveal here, that I was “the last girl out of the coffee house….”
Your hub seems like a dear!
I was definitely one of the last to leave the coffee house – many a diary entry was spent moaning about being the only person in the world to be “The Big V”.
I remeber all of my school stuff all of the guys – so we are opposite in that – but there are great chunks of my home life I have no idea about…and I don’t have my diaries anymore- part of me wishes I did , part of me is gla dI don’t have to look at pages of “I just LOOOOOVE Dexter Fletcher” and they were there -For embarrassing months – all the more so “jon Stamos” Oh dear…..
I *thought* I could remember all the guys, but my diaries proved me wrong.
John Stamos? I’m shocked.
its so sad :s
But on the upside, we get to forget about all the annoying, stupid shit we said or did in our youth.
I plan on having my diaries burned upon my death. I’d hate for my children or grandchildren to stumble on them. Oh, Lord.
I’d be absolutely horrified if anyone – ANYONE – read my diaries. And I think, now that I’ve read some, that includes me.
Makes you wonder why we keep hold of them, eh?
Oh, I wish I’d kept my diaries. My problem was that, even at the time, I knew they were full of things I wouldn’t want to see. I was also very concerned that if I died suddenly (of course in a very romanticised accident, with my hand to my forehead), other people would read them and judge me. So my diaries are long gone.
My only memory of what went in them is actually one from primary school. I took it to a friend’s house (as you do) and she convinced gullible young me to write down every swear word I knew. She then grabbed it from me, showed her mother and I got in big trouble for trying to teach her daughter rude words. Here’s one for her: Bitch.
Quelle bitch! (as I would have said in my diary – did I mention that a third of it was written in bad French?)
I once made the mistake of looking at a letter my friend had been writing to her boyfriend when she went to the toilet (she was writing it and THEN went to the toilet – she wasn’t writing it ON the toilet). It said something along the lines of:
“[NDM] is prattling on about something. God, she’s a fool.”
That certainly taught me an important lesson about reading other people’s letters…
Oh Em Gee – I just had a thought. What if you were in Year 12 NOW? You’d be putting those self-same diaries on the Interwebs for all to see! I guess that’s what MySpace basically is. (I am told that only old people use Facebook)
So for our kids’ generation, they may well have youtube videos to remind them of the daily Existential Crisis that is being a teenager.
I am also highly amused that your dad giving you money not only shocked but also appalled you. Dirty filthy money! 😉
I’ve been thinking the same. Would my diaries have been an anonymous blog? Like, er, this one?
But you wouldn’t have even known that you didn’t remember him if it weren’t for the diaries… I blame the diaries and your fickle teenage affections rather than a faulty memory…
Personally, I’m just glad I’d never run into him at a school reunion and completely blanked him. Now that I’ve read the diary, I can apologise for being a bitch in 1987 and not have to admit to being a bitch every year since by forgetting all about him.
Heh, comedy gold.
I wonder if The Forgotten One remembers you? Maybe he still tends a secret NDM flame? Maybe he’s a reader! Maybe he’s a commenter! Maybe he’s… okay, will stop there before train of thought devolves into stalking horror story.
I found some old letters my school friends and I had written to each other in class the other day. Wow, that was a terrifying experience. I thought we were pretty smart, savvy kids but it turns out we were woefully ignorant, embarrassingly libidinous and completely batshit insane.
I thought I was pretty cool, too. And suave in all matters of a sexual nature: “HE TURNS ME ON!!” (always capitalised and sometimes even underlined) was a frequently-used phrase. For someone who was The Big V, I wasn’t really fooling anyone.
Because my father is a much wiser man than I gave him credit for at the time, one of the gifts he have me when I was a kid, was a typewriter.
So my diaries, which go intermittently from mid teens to my mid 20s, are all typed. Which means I can never pretend that a word is illegible. Every single dumb thing is documented in the non-equivocal print of manual type, then electric type.
The pages are packed into a lever arch folder and have dividers for the years. I glanced at one page, for the first time in more than a decade, when I moved house about a year ago.
I was so shocked that I read no further. Firstly because the emotional uncertainty felt excrutiating in retrospect. And secondly because I wasn’t certain that I would discover hom much I have matured in all these years.
I teach teenagers, but somedays feel as wilful and confused and fucked up as any of them.
Yeah, I’m still sixteen, in my heart of hearts. But not in my waistline, bust or wardrobe.
But a typewritten diary? Dear lord, man. That means it’s pretty much ready to be published, right?
Oh wow! Coincidence! Simpatico! My folks are clearing out their storage and therefore I just acquired the motherload of diaries oh so many! I spent the first night up way too late reading thru to find that I’ve been ‘discovering’ the same things abt myself and the world over and over! Like, the same things in 1988 as last week!!!!
Sounds about right. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
When we’re 70 – or rather, when I’m 70 and you’re 65, let’s swap diaries for a laugh (and then a cry and a whole lot of cringe).
Hey, I’ve still got every letter you wrote to me from far away places, NDM. One day to torture you I’ll bring them out….perhaps when we meet up in June?
Just remember I have pretty much every letter you ever wrote me in response (she says, as she furiously rummages through boxes, trying to find them).
I have two of those boys on my Facebook. I know for a fact that I have snogged neither but I have it on good authority that one sat behind me in Maths class and the other was always sat with us smokers on the back seat of the bus.
The worst thing is, though, that they both remember me!!
How do you know you didn’t snog either? Did you ask them point blank?
I am so embarrassed whenever I read old diaries. I was still me, but so young, naive, earnest and just, adolescent. I hated being an adolescent. It makes me feel all icky just to think about it again.
Wonder what I’ll think of my journal now when I’m an old, old lady.
When I was 16, I thought I knew about everything. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that I knew about nothing then and still don’t know a jot now.
Brilliant! Shocking! And the best opening paragraph you’ve ever written.
Were you known as the “Not Drowning Teenager” back in the day? You were quite the animal.
In fact, you could say I was quite the “Beast” – except without the fucking part.
I only kept a diary for a couple of years when at university, so my high school years passed by undocumented and to my memory quite mild in comparison to those of others. However, the fact that you, dear NDM, can remember not a single thing about such a nice young lad, gives me pause for thought. I in fact may have had an amazing and scintillatingly romantic teenage life – I just can’t recall it! How wonderful to think not just what might have been, but what *may* have been.
Indeed it may have been, my dear Madame Zap. I guess that’s what old age gives us license to do: make up shit about the past to suit ourselves!
Wow – you sure were a wild thing back in the day. I can’t believe you sent a postcard saying “FUCK LIKE A BEAST” to a prefect. Bloody hilarious. Seeing as how I went to an all girls school we didn’t have a lot of the ‘fucking like a beast’ going on. Though we did walk around swooning over the tradies doing our school’s extension. What a job for a bunch of brickies and chippies, surrounded all day by hormonal girls. And also kinda wrong. Don’t Stand So Close To Me by Sting was a hit at the time. Funny that.
Needless to say my diairies were full of angsty stuff like, “Saw GS today. He was hammering. He looked like Mel Gibson. I will kill myself if he doesn’t look at me.” If *sigh* had been all the rage back then I would have had it on every page.
In my first year of marriage I came home one day to discover that my husband had done a big ‘clean-up’. Gone were the diairies, the tortured love missives to my best-ever girlfriend, the tentative declarations from – finally – a boy, and all my yearbooks. Hubby thought it was just a bunch of old rubbish.
I was SHOCKED. And APPALLED.
Fabulous post btw 🙂
He threw out your diaries, letters and yearbooks? My husband wouldn’t dare. Would. Not. Dare. We’ve lugged them all around the world along with my promise that one day I’ll burn the lot. He’s still waiting.
I’m more impressed you describe a root as “taking a lover”. Wow uber classy there. I found mine whilst cleaning out the shed and saw this on one of the days “Get out of my diary Mum, I know you’re reading it”. No shit she was reading it. I was a little gadabout, she was probably scared for my life.
I thought that was pretty choice wording considering my complete lack of experience in such matters.
I don’t *think* my dad ever read my diary – it would completely shock and appall me to find out that he did. Maybe that’s why he gave me the $80??
i am shocked and appalled that no-one has asked the important questions – did you achieve your 1987 resolutions?
I’m glad you asked, mother of wingnut.
Basically, from my diaries, I surmise that a) I had a slightly-higher-than-average score in my HSC; b) was constantly hassled by the “Aged Ps” about my room and c) thanks to a handful of (mostly) unreciprocated and tortuous crushes and a few ill-advised snogs at parties, I continued to be a fool.
Oh my, girls (and later women) and their diaries. I never kept one. Thats not to say I never started them. Somewhere, across the vast dusty tracts of my past, lay abandoned, many black bound (always!) diaries with my personal details, next of kin ( I used to like to vary these according to my current state of relationship with my mother) and a first entry that would have said something like Jan 1st. I hate new year….
We always forget the nice ones. Trouble is, my memory has seen to it that I’ve forgotten most of the ‘interesting’ ones aswell. Don’t be shocked, but I’ll probably make them up……
This is damn fine stuff by the way, I’m a little bit awed by you.
I can tell you now, awaydad, that you would not be awed by me if you read my diaries.
Still, I thank you.
I’m shaken and shocked that you won the English prize whilst spelling weird incorrectly! Wierd.
I have no idea what the teechers at my skool was thinging.
So funny, thank you I needed a good laugh this morning. I love resolution no 3 – that is my morning mantra
Mine, too. I’ve never managed to do it, unfortunately.
*sigh*, me either