November 22,1981

Dear Diary,

            Big day today! Went to church, then mom’s bowling meeting, then to Arby’s, then to Aunt Bev’s. Isn’t it weird the way everybody [sic] name fits them? We are mad at them again (Marie and Jamie). I mean really mad! Didn’t sit with them at lunch. Mom tells my nieces and nephew that if they don’t put their shoes away she is going to burn them in the furnace. With clothes I weigh 76 pounds, w/o 74-75. I’m going to get a haircut soon. I’m growing you-know-what’s hardly, and I haven’t had it yet. Isn’t 11 old enough?  No maybe 12 or 13. Maybe I’ll write a book someday.

                                                  
Love, Pickle

BTW….still waiting for those “you-know-whats”- Editor

I invited a few people over on Saturday night to hang in my yard and grill up some Korean bbq. One person told another who told another, and suddenly I had a good size crowd in my yard. In fact, I had to ask some people to bring their own chairs. When I moved to San Diego 13 years ago, I didn’t know anyone and it took  a long time before I made any real friends. So the realization that I now have more friends than I have chairs is pretty special to me. Little victories like that are worth celebrating.

I know, you are totally thinking that I must have been head cheerleader and dated the BMOC of my middle school, but shockingly, unless you were a headgear fetishist or had a soft spot for feathered hair, people didn’t really consider me a looker. Poor 12-year-old Stef had to endure glasses that weighed 7 lbs and a haircut that was inspired by Fonzie. And the headgear! You’d think that much metal would fix the reception on our old-ass tv so that I could at least watch The Facts of Life clearly, but no such luck.

So yeah, my adolescent years were rough, and they were often very painful, but in the end I’m stronger because of them. Would I be such a secure person if I hadn’t spent so many years paralyzed by insecurity? Would I have such an excellent sense of humor if I hadn’t spent my youth using it as a defense mechanism? Would I have such bordering-on-cocky amounts of self-esteem if I hadn’t been sorely lacking it for so long? In the end, I think the whole valuable learning experience that comes with surviving, then thriving, through all matters of pain puts me better off than the girls who never got stuck on the bottom end of the social teeter-totter.

The humiliation of the headgear, however, was just plain unfair.

Someone said something to me that was so awesome that my brain keeps picking at it. My friend Matt and I were hanging out, when he said, “What I wouldn’t give to let my present day self go back and tell my sophomore year self some shit” (that isn’t an exact quote, but Matt talks alot and I can’t remember it all, I just can’t).
 
In this case, to go back to Matt’s sophomore year, I would be going back to 8th grade, which I almost like better. In your sophomore year, you are pretty much halfway to being the a-hole that you are going to be in life, but something about 8th grade is perfect- pre high school, king of the middle school, just coming out of that horrible 6th and 7th grade hideousness, and hitting your stride before high school takes the wind out you for your entire freshman year. I think 8th grade Amy is going to be willing to listen, while up at the high school, sophomore year Matt is going to be completely blowing off the 39 year-old version. 
  
So of course, the big question: What do you tell her about Michael Jackson? She has his face plastered all over her locker, and defends him daily against all the guys that thack his face and call him a gaywad. “How can he be gay? PYT is sooo about a girl!”, little Amy defends. Oh little Amy, if you only knew the importance of the middle letter of the anagram!

Soph Matt has talked Matt39 into driving them to Awad’s party store for a 5th of Mad Dog 20/20.
  
Alright…what do you tell your younger self about love? About sex? About her future? Cuz, she is definitely going to want to know about her future. Does she have horses? Does she ever get to meet Prince? Will Glen ever like her? All excellent questions, but the last 20 years of my life are spread out in front of her here. I wonder if I warn her away from anything? Would you? Think about the mistakes you’ve made. I mean the really truly embarrassing ones that make you feel a little sick. These things, do you want her to avoid them? Because the person you loved for too long, the thing you said when you shouldn’t have, the person you let go too soon, before you had a chance to do or say one last thing, they have made you more thoughtful, smarter and, of course, scarred in one spot or another. Scars aren’t always bad; sometimes they make up stronger tissue than the original. Sometimes the scars are the only things that keep you from going along with all of your heart’s bad ideas.

The Matts are talking about Heavy Metal. Matt39 is trying to convince Soph that, believe it or not, certain Black Sabbath albums are going to be very hard to come by in 2009.
  
So here’s what I’m going to go with. I’m gonna tell her to brush her teeth well before the first 8th grade dance, but make sure she has takes out her gum when she hears the DJ start to play “Faithfully”. I’ll tell her that if she treasures that new raincoat from Marianne’s she will not under any circumstances give her locker com to Rosemary Brown. I’ll tell her to go ahead and stand up to Tracee P. But as for the heavier things, I think I’ll leave them.  I could tell her that everything works out, but she’s only 13, she thinks that already. 
 
As for Michael, well, I have to just believe that it will all work out for him too.
 
Meanwhile, the Matts are wasted; they are howling at the moon. Hopefully they both got too drunk to remember what was said. Unfortunately, only one of them will be able to bounce back without a hangover.

Editor’s Note: Please read this keeping in mind it was written senior year of high school

You’re neat.
I like you.
That’s supposed to be a compliment.
(have you ever thought about how conceited that is?)

Anyway, I do
You make me think.
You make me think like this (arrow to the first paragraph)
see??? you just did.
Neat huh?
you also make me smile
all day
all hour 2nd hour
U no Y
Thanks
I haven’t been up to it lately, I’m starting to come out of a funk
but anyhow, to change the subject and save myself from looking lame
I’d like to talk about life
with ya
I like the way you can shock me
and
I don’t take offense
so
I’d like to talk to you
course, that’s not the only reason…
Wanna hear the rest ?
NOPE!
you scare me
O.K., O.K.,
You intimidate me
That’s all… all I’m telling.
I have a secret.
In November
when there was still no snow.
I stayed after school.
I read your Senior English Journal.
the whole thing.
I wanted to be your secret admirer
I fell in love.
I was totally infatuated
for months and months
but I never did anything about it.

because you were so…

contemptuous.

Besides-
You said I looked like a wolf.

Lots of reasons.

November 18, 1981
 
Today Joey wrote me a letter. His letter said “It’s all over, I keep doing things wrong”. Do you know what I did? I told him I still wanted to go with him. I want to go with Joe F. so bad, but he is Jamie’s man. Emily and I are having a war against Marie. In a letter Marie cut me down low and Emily stood right up for me. I love her for a friend.
                                                                                             Amy
 p.s. People do like me

In our last installment of “Are you There God, It’s Me Diary”, we left our “hero” eagerly awaiting the Jr. High dance with her beau, Joey B. I’m sure you are dying to know how this all turned out…

November 17, 1981

I went to the dance. Joey played Disco King. I don’t think anyone likes me. I’ve got Math to do so I won’t write a long letter. I hate waiting for the future. I hope I get a horse. Well, see you.
                               Amy

A couple of notes here. One, I cannot believe how much I underplayed the Disco King event. It’s possible I was already denying to myself it happened and only noted it for historical accuracy. When the music began to play in the gym, Joey B became a youth possessed. Now, since Joey was a large young man, it would not be a stretch for you to use Chris Farley doing that SNL Chippendale’s sketch in your mental imagery. Only make Mr. Farley dressed like the dude that lives in the van down by the river, because my boyfriend, possibly sensing the momentousness of this occasion, had worn a tie and sports jacket. I’m led to believe by this that a lot of thought and planning was put into this performance. Had Joey received attention at his aunt’s wedding reception last year and been biding his time until he could use dance to show the world he was more than a fat kid with bad grades and an eleven year old embittered prune on his arm? Or worse, had he scripted this night to impress said prune? Let’s hope for the former, since it was not long before the majority of the gym’s occupants INCLUDING EIGHTH GRADERS had formed a wildly enthusiastic ring around Joey, encouraging him to dance faster and with more abandon than seems physically possible. We can assume the prune was not impressed. Not surprisingly, I am very cloudy on what I was up to at this time. It is very possible I was doing what I do to this day when I see Chris Farley; collapsing to the floor, rocking wildly and thumb sucking.
  
Two, I don’t believe I have to mention poetic justice, but there, I did.

This poor Diary thought its miseries were over when I threw it in a plastic tub somewhere after my 15th birthday, but oh no, apparently its humiliations have just begun. I’m about to introduce my circa junior high diary to its new millennium counterpart on the internets…just when it thought I might have outgrown being a self absorbed snotball.
 
Allow me to set the scene, if you will…..

My mom takes me out shopping one November afternoon in 1981, in what I am sure was some ill deserved face time with her outrageously badly behaved prepubescent daughter. I imagine myself to have been something between Nellie Olsen from Little House on the Prairie and that cute kid from The Exorcist. This is what you see on the very first page of my diary, for example…

I was going through another one of those rough patches that the brilliant though socially repugnant are known to have many, many times before they reach adulthood, and she meant to straighten me out with that time honored combo—creative writing for the soul, garnished with a bit of all out bribery, in the form of…well, you’ll see.

Nov 16, 1981

 Mom and I went shopping today. It was really great. She bought me Calvin Klein’s and this diary.
  My sister and her three brats are staying with us. They’ve been here since June. On the way home, Mom spoiled it. She started telling me how I should appreciate my jeans. She said I should have eaten my asparagus and scrambled eggs.
  I am going with Joe Bowen. I am going to the dance with him

                                                  GROSS OUT!!!!
                                                    ____________
                                                     ___________
                                                                                         Amy

p.s. I am going to break up with him

Now, on the facing page, I have affixed this picture and caption, asserting once and for all to the diary that I am a much cooler person than my present boyfriend would suggest.

It’s actually an important assertion, considering that although I have only known this diary for 45 minutes, it’s probably already one of my best friends. Because, well, this is me in 6th grade…

Okay? I was eleven, people. As you have probably already deduced, all involved were super happy when I became old enough to start wearing a bit of makeup….but that is another day, another shopping trip, another diary entry in the….JUDY BLUME DIARY.

I just added a new category to the selection of posts, this one called Dawn of the Dork. You’ll see what that means when the first post goes up. A little tease- Amy Kate just found her 6th grade diary….stay tuned….