Sweet blast from the past

At our house we're crossing off another rite of passage in growing up a girl: Kaylee got her very first diary today.  I felt a heavy sigh as she ripped open the box with such gleeful anticipation.  My heart sank, just a little bit, because now in her life, apparently there's a need to keep things secret.

My sweet boy, upon watching the spectacle began to cry.  He's a pretty empathetic little dude so I assumed he was also mourning the loss of a small piece of Kaylee's little girl wonder.  I pulled him on my lap, cradled him gently and asked what was wrong.  His response?  He was so worried about the things that a big sister would write in her diary about a little brother.

I giggled and explained that I almost never wrote anything in my diary about my brother.  No, there were far too many other exciting and juicy details to write about besides my stinky, mean dork of an older brother.

To prove my point I ran upstairs and found said diary.  My heart sank a bit, as the key that opens it was not anywhere to be found in my sock drawer.  This I find most amusing because, really, WTF would I need to lock my childhood diary for?  Geesh, I'm 40, married with two kids and there's nothing my hubs doesn't know about me.  Or does he?

Fortunately for me time has not been kind to my locked diary and I was able to open it up far too easily.  I think my brother greased the skids all those years I KNOW he was SECRETLY reading my diary.  Surely it gave him all the ammo he could use to needlessly shame me in front of my friends (and his as it turns out).

Much like computers, diary technology has progressed far beyond what I could have envisioned as a young girl.  My sad little broken golden key, long since missing, is no match for the VOICE RECOGNITION PASSWORD JOURNAL that my daughter now owns.  This means that her voice and ONLY HER VOICE can access the diary.  Oy.

But back to my diary.  For me, it was like opening up a book to a past long forgotten (purposefully and also because of all the brain cells I killed in college with copious amounts of alcohol).  I started to read some entries and found myself LAUGHING OUT LOUD at the crap I used to deem worthy of paper.  I sincerely hope that my writing abilities have progressed far beyond what I found on those pages.

And because I found it all too funny I felt the need to share a couple entries with you.  And I know I'm totally poking fun at a defenseless, insecure 8-10 year old child, be she was me and it's my God-given right to make fun of myself.  So here you go:

3/13/1985: Dear Diary, Today I went to 93 Zoo FM and took a tour of it. I still haven't talked to Dwayne but I don't care. I'm going to Skatetown tomorrow. I hope Dwayne goes. REALLY HOPE! (this was double underlined btw). Well I better go. 'Bye.

3/14/1985: Dear Diary, Hi! I'm going skateing (that's how I spelled it!) in a few minutes! I can't wait! I hope Dwayne goes. Sort of. He's not cute anymore. Well I'd better go. Bye. Hello! Dwayne went but he didn't skate. He spent his money on video games. I'll leave you with this: Let's go surfin now, everybody's learning how, come on the safari with ME! Bye!

This is the kind of schizophrenic schmidt I found in that little pink diary of mine.  First of all, Skatetown was a total meat market when I was a kid.  You went hoping to see boys from your school and meet new boys from other schools. 

You would certainly not feel any sort of worth unless someone asked you to skate, just like if no dude gave you the time of day at the Bistro.  If you didn't get asked to skate on a doubles skate at all through the whole night, life was over, you were a total loser and very unpopular. 

Skatetown was the singles bar of my adolescence.  The only difference is that I was slightly shorter.  All my memories of those days are a bit fuzzy (like bar hopping in my 20's) and the night was only a success if I got some digits.  

The only other difference I can think of is that I didn't almost get arrested for passing out on a park bench in front of Skatetown, but I did almost in front of the Blues Bouquet, but that's another story for another time.  Mom, you might want to skip that blog post....

If I could talk to little  Amy from 1985 I would ask her what on earth could have happened to Dwayne in 24 hours that he was suddenly no longer cute?  I can't for the life of me imagine, unless he got a bad haircut, had all his teeth punched out, or came to school covered in pimples.  I've got nothing.  And my diary is FILLED with so and so is cute, then so and so is so NOT cute.

I also could barely keep track of who was "going out" with who.  As my Dad would say, it was a bit of a soap opera, lovingly titled "The Dumb and the Senseless" if you want to know the truth.

And I TOTALLY forgot that Randy Harless was my first boyfriend ever.  He asked me to go with him, and I went with him for awhile, though I don't recall actually going anywhere, so I'm not sure how it all turned out.  

Allegedly he was popular, which I find hard to believe because based on my entries I wasn't popular and no popular boys liked me as anything more than "friends".  The story of my life. I actually though my first real boyfriend was someone entirely different, so I am super glad I found my diary to set the record straight.

I also found it humorous that even as a fifth grade girl I found it super annoying that a boy would choose to play video games than do something as exciting as skating.  I mean really people.  Video games?  

And yet, as I type this, my husband and children are playing a video game of sorts on the iPad (a ghastly game called Plants versus Zombies) and I am still equally irritated over the choice of a video game.

In closing, I will be digging into this little gem of a find and posting more stuff to mock.  Seriously people, it's a freaking GOLD MINE in there.  If you find your diary and can bust it open, I certainly hope you find as much to laugh about, as I have in mine.  At the end of the day, if we can't laugh at ourselves....then we haven't found our old diary.

And WTF is up with the "let's go surfin' now" thing anyway?