Last week, I started posting stuff from my old journals. It seemed to be a hit, so I'll continue for a bit. Teenage angst gets real tedious real fast. Goddamn but teenagers can be boring, but then so can adults, so...
And thus ends journal number 2. Is my life riveting or what? More on Luc in the next installment.December 28, 1977
... Christmas itself was pretty dull, 'cept for the champagne, which by the way was delicious. I kept the bottle as a souvenir (and thus the abiding love story of my life was born, we have been together much longer than Mr. Jazz and I...)
March 24, 1978
I wonder what it's like to be old, I don't mean like 20 or 30. I mean really old like 50 or 60 or so (Ah pre-Jazz, now that I'm pushing 50 I have to think you are a most annoying little prat). I guess I'll have to wait and see. I wonder if I'll ever get there and if I even want to. It's weird to think of myself at 50 or 60 or 70 (and kiddo, it's even weirder to be there, scary weird actually, and believe me, it's weird to think of myself as 17). Somehow I don't see myself as a diligent grandmother baking cookies (In your Lit classes, this was called foreshadowing, and guess what? no kids, zip, nada - did I tell you I was lucid even back then? Yay me, at least I was seeing clearly sometimes).
March 28, 1978
From now on, guys'll be friends and nothing else. (Jazzy, they have to want to be your friends plus how can you have a broken heart - or something of that nature I guess, you weren't very precise - when you've never even had a boyfriend? Crushed by a crush? *insert eye roll here, please). Of course, I know myself well enough to not really believe this (kudos to you, you boy crazy adolescent). There must be someone somewhere, at least I hope so (ain't that just the saddest most pathetic thing? The be all and end all of my existence: I just wanted someone to love me...)
June 11, 1978
The prom was yesterday, and guess what? Yep, I didn't go. Instead Ann (names have been changed to protect the innocent - not that I know who or where they are anymore, but isn't changing names the done thing?) and I went to a restaurant for supper and then we went roller skating (I knew how to roller skate? Who the hell knew...) It was nice (classic case of "no one invited me but I really really didn't want to go anyway you know"). I guess I should throw out my pass for the prom, but I feel like keeping it as a memory of the useless end of high school (I never was a fan of high school, but I might already have mentioned that). L (I didn't bother changing that, who the hell is she???) came to see me at 10:00 am to gloat about the prom - I could've killed her. She wasn't supposed to go but at the last minute she asked an ex boyfriend to go and he said yes (exes! she had an ex and I had never even had a boyfriend!!! colour me green ...). And Lou went with a guy she hardly knew and now they're going out! (adding insult to injury). It's no fair (dude, life ain't fair, it's good to learn the lesson as soon as possible).
July 14, 1978
I'm starting to think the only ones who aren't crazy on earth are the ones that we supposedly sane people consider cracked. Maybe they're the only really sane people. Maybe they're right now planning a mass uprise [sic] and they'll put us all away instead (as you can see, I also had my philosophical moments and yes, I'm utterly embarrassed at the inanity).
August 2, 1978
I saw in an article that young people are returning to old values (seems like every year someone is touting a return to old values, it obviously is nothing new. I wonder if they returned to old values back in the day when the old values were the new values, or whatever). I think it might be true. In my case anyway. I was thinking about it on the bus, and even if before I had been ready to live with a guy, now what I want is to get married, no shacking up for me thank you very much! (famous last words - at least I wasn't talking about having kids - I plead temporary insanity for that little nugget).
August 11, 1978
I want to leave. Once I've finished school I want to have an adventure, i want to travel I don't at all want to get married only to regret it a couple of years later because I've never done anything. (I never did travel after school... that took a few years. more's the pity. It would have done me a world of good, but i acted all "responsible", and instead fled to Montreal to reinvent myself - at school and then I got a job - it's the best I could force myself to do in the way of "rebellion"). There are so many things I want to do, mostly to travel for a year and to make it (that's sufficiently vague to leave the way wide open)... and I want to get married and have children when I'm certain I've done all I want to do. (well there's a flip. I came to my senses about the kid thing, luckily. I wouldn't have made the best of moms).
... I try to pretend like I have confidence in myself. I'm starting CEGEP (a sort of weird hybridwe have in Quebec between high school and university - it equals about the last year of HS and the first of uni in the rest of North America) soon, leaving my life and my friends behind me and jumping into a whole new world. (How's that for melodrama?) Don't tell, but I'm terrified.... I know it'll be ok after a while, but diving is the scary part. Going back to English school where I don't know anyone at all...
Luc, that guy I met at D's place wants us to go out together, he wants to be my boyfriend! I said I'd have to think about it (ever the prudent one, but it's never a good sign when you have to think about it - it also isn't a good sign when you re-read your diary and think, who? because honestly, he didn't leave a lasting impression, I have no idea who this person is. The slate? it was wiped clean of him. You'd think after wanting a boyfriend for so long, the least I owe him is to remember him, but no, I'm drawing a total blank). I think I'm going to say yes. I'll have to tell mom, but I think she won't mind. D wants me to ask him if her ex is interested in her because she's still in love with him (for the record, I believe her persistence paid off, she waited years for the guy, but finally convinced him she was the woman for him. This bit of trivia I know because D is my cousin and I heard about this through my mom I think) I was too shy to ask though. I have to stop that too. (cause shyness can be switched off like a light, for the record, it didn't work, even to this day).
.
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16 comments:
My dear Jazz, you were an endearing adolescent in a fluffy, bummbling kitten sort of way. Its kinda amazing to see a starry-eyed youngster grow up. :)
Makes me wish I kept diaries as a youngling, cuz it would totally be fun and cringe-worthy to do my own trip down memory lane.
1978...What a great year, its the year I was born.
I agree with Rachel's comment...1978 was the year I finished high school...a lifetime and another person ago...and no, your life was not boring...
I love this. Especially your Now-Jazz comments to the Then-Jazz. Hilarious. More please.
I think I may have made this same comment on the first entry, but what the heck. I love the parenthetical asides! There's nothing quite so funny as someone looking back and commenting - with candor - on their youth. Good stuff.
Jazz, I love this comical, insightful conversation between pre-Jazz and you. And since I graduated from high school in 1975, we are almost contemporaries. Now I want to dig up my old journals.
V.
That was fun. Were you shocked when you found the passage about wanting to have kids? I loved how at such a young age you couldn't picture yourself as a "diligent" grandmother. And I loved that you would use a word like diligent. Good times.
Annoying to your older self, perhaps - but still sweet.
What a fascinating look back!
I think the older people get, the more conservative they get, so it might be true that they revert to what they know OR they grow more frightened of the world and take steps backward (when their former selves would gasp at such retroversion). In any case, it's an interesting phenomenon.
Never went to prom myself. Wasn't asked and at this point, I don't know if I really didn't want to go or just said that because I wasn't asked. Sometimes I feel like I missed out on something, but most times I feel like I probably just missed out on the cliquish behavior I detested even then.
Thought provoking post!
Aw, poor Luc. And he loved you so. If only he knew what he'd missed. A vital, witty, smart as they come lady who is just one of the neatest people I've ever met -- at least electronically. I love the poignancy and honesty of these pieces, plus your running editorial commentaries. I am so glad you decided to run them. I say this as a "really old" person well on the far-side of 50.
"I'm starting to think the only ones who aren't crazy on earth are the ones that we supposedly sane people consider cracked." Hold that thought, Jazzette. You'll need it again more than you can possibly imagine.
Okay, I am LOVING these. Maybe next you could, er, put up a video of yourself roller skating.
Yes.
You.
Could.
nice blog
This is great stuff! I can't wait for more nuggets.
You've brought back memories. I'm glad I didn't keep a journal during my teens. It would have been full of weird religious claptrap. If I remember correctly, I invested a great deal of energy in combing through a bizarre hodgepodge text whose content was comprised of ancient myths and stories from clay tablets, all of which had been interpreted, edited, and compiled by various committees of males through the ages.
For some idiotic reason, I hoped this text would tell me exactly how far I was allowed to go in the front seat of my boyfriend's car. Kissing? Touching through clothing? Touching without clothing? Exactly what could I do without risking damnation?
Unsurprisingly, the text was silent on this burning topic. However, it did teach me that a book doesn't have to be coherent or even interesting in order to be enormously popular.
Very cool... I sooo wish I'd have kept a journal.
Do you think you were completely honest with your journal back then or did you, like most of us, write the journal of the teenager we wanted to be?
Rachel - I've been compared to many things, but a fluffy kitten is a first. Bumbling, way to often for comfort.
e - we finished high school the same year.
Alison - you'll be begging me to shut up by the time I'm done.
Sully - Glad I'm keeping you amused!
V - yes, do it do it.
Geewits - Yeah, the whole maternal instinct thing... not so much
SAW - Looking back, now I realize why I find so many teenagers annoying. They remind me of me.
Liar - yeah, proms are no doubt more of the same aren't they?
Ian - Whoa, really OLD!!!
Jeaux - I had my perceptive moments, not terribly well expressed, but nevertheless.
Joce - No. I. Couldn't. No such footage exists.
Nevalia - Thanks
WartyMam - Damn, I'm glad I didn't have religious nuttitude to contend with...
Dist - Start one.
XUP - I'm not sure how honest I was with myself. As honest as I knew how at any rate. From what I have noticed, not as honest as I should've been about being "in love" I really tried to convince myself a few times, when obviously I wasn't.
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