Thursday, April 26, 2007

I'll try to get through this without throwing up a third time

Get your barf bags ready for the second installment of Teenage Turmoil…
March 22, 1991

Dear Diary -

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, OH MY GOSH!!!! You will never believe what happened today at school. Before I tell you, I have to say it was the best day I have had since the beginning of this quarter!
Consider that, prior to this, my best day ever was the day I got a new pair of pink and white British Knight sneakers, that should put things into perspective for you.
Anyways, I’ll tell you now. Oooh, I’m getting butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it. Ok. Let me calm down...

God help me if I ever have a daughter who doesn’t go straight from 8 years of age to 24. Because if I have to deal with this kind of silliness, I fear there will be a lot of eye rolling and vomiting. On my part.
Alright. At the way beginning of the school day when I first walked into school, this little short kid came up to ask me if I would go out with Peter.

Yep…this is back when boys knew how to really charm a lady. They’d send a messenger. Or, alternatively, pass a note in class that said:
Do you like me?
 Yes

No
Hope so.
Love, Peter

The men of my age group today could really learn from the 13 year olds of my past. They were truly well versed at the art of wooing.
And I said “Why, did he ask you to ask me?” And he said yes. Then I said “Well, if he really wanted to go out with me he would ask me himself.” So then the boy said ok and then left and I went to my first and second period.

Nice. Check me OUT! I was girly (and vomitously so) back then, but at least I had balls. Or, descended ovaries, rather. Whatever.
Then, during the break, I was so nervous and I didn’t know what to say if he asked me so Miss Legs For Miles and I and Heidi went walking around. Then we arrived at the lockers just as the bell rang. So that was a relief.

I know, ‘cause PHEW! I might have, like, totally passed out or whatever if he’d actually asked me out. Totally. Like, for real.
Then we went to English. (Oh and by the way during break Shauna pulled me aside and said “I wanted to tell you this before you found it out the wrong way from someone else. I went up to Peter and asked him if he was going to ask you out and he said he was. And I said ‘Good, because I want to be there when she rejects you.’ I meant to say ‘IF she rejects you.’ I’m sorry! Because now he’s mad.”)

Eww. I just threw up in my mouth a little from how sooo 90210, The Early Years this is. Gawd!
Ok, anyways, Paul looked mad and I have English with him so that was kind of bad. I had such a bad stomach ache. But I lived.

Ya don’t say.
Then next came math. And I have that class with him too. In that class (Shauna is in it too) Shauna apologized to Peter about saying that. And he still looked mad.

Lunch was next. I went to my locker and met everyone there then we all went to the lunch area and…ate! Then when we all finished, we went to the PE area because there was a basketball game between the teachers and students. But when we got there and we’d already watched part of the game I had to go to the bathroom. So Miss LFM, Heidi and I departed from the group and went to the “little girls room.”

Ahh yes…the Must Pee In A Pack Syndrome. I remember this. It is widely known in the scientific community that the females' adolescent urethral sphincter can only be coaxed into relaxation, so as to allow micturition, while in the presence of at least two other female friends. Something occurs in the early twenties…oh, I don’t know, something called Growing Up, that eradicates this Syndrome.
Then since lunch was almost over and I wanted to go find Paul because I wanted to tell him that I didn’t tell Shauna to say that we went to the lockers. And as usual he was there with all his friends. So I said “Peter, I didn’t want or tell Shauna to say what she said.” And he said “Oh that’s okay don’t worry about it.”

Among the many things that make me want to hurl about this embarrassingly long play-by-play of the faux mating rituals I participated in as an adolescent, is the pure disdain I seemed to have had at the time for proper punctuation. Dude, seriously. Where are the commas? (I’m sure that when I’m re-reading this blog when I’m 80, I’ll be like, “Dude. What's with all the sentence fragments?”)
So then the bell rang and Shauna and Lana showed up. And ofcourse they were asking Peter if he was going to ask me out. And I didn’t hear him all the way but I think he said something like “The girl hates me.” And Shauna and Lana were saying “No, no, she told us she was seriously considering it.” And Peter didn’t say anything, he just kept nodding or something like that. So I just turned around and said “Yes, I am considering it!”

[Leans over to barf in emesis basin strategically placed an arms length away in anticipation of the nausea this diary entry would elicit.]
And Peter looked at me kind of shocked and said “You…you are?”

So I smiled and then took my books out of the locker and put them in my book bag. Then I was just standing there waiting for Shauna who was still pestering Peter (we had next period together so that’s why I was waiting). So then finally Paul just looked at me and said “Will you go out with me?” And I said “Let me think about it over the weekend ok?” And he said “Ok.” And then we went to our separate classes.

Let me think about it? After all that, after all the build up and the butterflies and the barfing (oh, wait, that was just now, not then), I said Let Me Think About It??? What a dweeb.
Then at the end of the day he waited up for me and we walked to the bus together (but we ride separate buses).

So it was a short walk. Regardless, I’m sure, in my adolescent peabrain, I’d already decided I wanted to have twelve of his blue green eyed babies by the end of it.
Exciting day wasn’t it? I think the answer I’m going to give him is quite obvious, don’t you?

[Barfs again. Then dry heaves for a while.]

13 comments:

mindthegap said...

oh god - that's hysterical and sooooo embarrassing (said in a wingey teenage voice). I found my diary written at 15 and it is the most appalling piece of drivel I've ever seen.

Waspgoddess said...

Oh - my - gaaawwwd!

If I ever found my diaries from this era I wouldn't need to buy toilet paper for quite some time.

mist1 said...

Your journals from that time are so much better than mine. Mine say stuff like:

Monday:
1 slice of orange
72 glasses of water
2 frozen peas

Am still fatter than Amber.

Tuesday:
12 grains of rice
68 ice cubes
1 blade of grass

I hate Amber.

Anonymous said...

Tough love even at 13 years of age... nice... I vomited only 3 times in my mouth but felt a bit nauseated througout... So did Peter (who was not entirely unpleasant [or is it Paul?]) get a kiss at the end or is more still to come?

La Cubana Gringa said...

mind the gap - Hi! Drivel is an excellent word for this brand of literature.

waspgoddess - I'm so conflicted...on the one hand, I think it would make excellent kindling for our fireplace, but on the other, I think it's good to keep around...almost as a preemptive test to see if I'd be fit for motherhood. If I can tolerate my own drivel (courtesy of mind the gap) then I should be able to tolerate that of any future offspring. At least in theory.

mist - You so shouldn't have had that 12th grain of rice.

La Cubana Gringa said...

dochechka - Oh there's WAAAAYYYY more where that came from. The saga continues in next week's installment. (For which I will just go ahead and put a nasogastric tube down so as to avoid the whole vomiting continuously thing.)

Sharon said...

I kinda liked the anticipation...but I never went thru with the dates. I went steady with a guy once just to wear his ring. Hahahaha...stupid him. I never went out with him. I was a shy evil type.

Unknown said...

when I was about 9 I wrote this really quite romantic love letter to a girl in school, and my mother found it in my jacket pocket. oh the embarrassment! my dad and her were laughing at the fact that I said I 'loved' her in the letter, which for them, was ludicrous. 'you can't love someone when you're that young!', they said. At the time I thought that meant when I grew up, falling in love would feel far more intense than when I was a boy. but it wasn't, really. It was just the same.

La Cubana Gringa said...

sharon - Ha! Going steady for you meant wearing his ring...for me it meant wearing his jacket. What kind of idiot was I to go after an Eagles Parka anyway!?!

edvard - It really is, come to think of it. Just, in my case, now with a few less OHMYGOSH's and girly giggles. Thank GOODNESS.

Anonymous said...

enidd wonders, too, if really we just learn to hide all that excitement and gushiness (all those adjectives!) under our calm adult exteriors. which is kind of sad, really.

La Cubana Gringa said...

enidd - On the one hand, I know what you mean...but on the other, I'm kinda glad I've outgrown the ridiculous knack I had for "falling for" guys who were "not terribly ugly" after the most effort they put into making a move was sending a messenger to ask me out on their behalf. Even if I did just outgrow it last summer. Still counts.

Catherine said...

OOOOH, pink and white British Knights?? Dude. My thirteen-year-old self is totally jealous.

Anxiously awaiting the rest of the Peter/Paul love story,

Catherine

Anonymous said...

My 13 year old daughter could've written this :) sounds so much like her.