A day in the life

Have I mentioned how much I like Henry David Throeau? When Nathan and I visited Boston a few years ago, we took the train out to Concord and saw just about everything there was to see in that town. We took our tour on foot and our first stop was Walden Pond. Well, we actually stopped at Starbucks first and then walked to Walden Pond. We hiked to the spot where Thoreau’s cabin used to be, the one in which he lived during his year of solitude out in the woods. While were where there, I dipped an empty juice bottle into the water and capped it with a hope my contraband wouldn’t be confiscated by airport security when we left for home.

I could go on to explain why I like Thoreau enough to keep corked bottle of green pond water on my bookshelf, but that’s not really the point of today’s post. The point of today’s post is to have a little fun, and Thoreau just adds a bit of history and is a good setup for having that fun.

It seems someone out there is also a big fan of Thoreau and has posted his journals online. If you click on the link, you’ll be treated to a brief account of what he was doing 150 years ago. Today’s post has something to do with birds and a turtle. A lot of them are like that. The man really loved nature.

I’ve been keeping my own journals for about 25 years now and thought it might be fun to look back and see what I was doing so many ears ago. It turns out my own journals are about as mundane as Thoreau’s . There’s nothing about turtles and birds, but there is a lot about food and diets.

My idea was to search for a journal entry from June 10th and post it here, but the one entry I found was excruciatingly boring. I wrote it after finishing a Spanish exam and gave a vivid account of how I had to pee. I also documented exactly how many candy bars and ice cream cones I had eaten in the previous 24 hours. Yawn.

But then I found the following entry. It talks about music, friends and boys. It’s full of silly girl-like dreams and ends with a stereotypical lament about needing to lose weight. It’s undated, but I know it was written sometime in August of 1987 shortly before my sophomore year of high school. If Donielle can wear her New Kids On The Block badge with pride, I can certainly offer you this:

Right now I’m in my bedroom listening to George Michael sing “I Want Your Sex”. I love this song. I’m thinking of school right now. I must be crazy! Right? Naw, I’m actually anxious to get back. I have so many things I want to do. One major thing I want to do is get a boyfriend. I don’t want to force myself on someone like T- does. Oh boy! I have my eye on someone but he doesn’t even know I’m alive. Oh yes, he did hit me with his trombone at Band Camp, but that’s as far as it got. I have dreams of him noticing me, then one day he gives me his ring and asks me to go with him. This only happens in teen romance novels though, and life is not a teen romance novel. Maybe I’ll get a boyfriend next year, but it won’t be this guy.

When I get back to school I intend to be more outgoing and friendly and not so shy. I guess I didn’t get very involved last year because I was a weenie freshman and I didn’t know anybody. A- and I agreed to be more outgoing.

Another thing I intend to do is lose weight. I know I say this every year, but this year I really need to if I expect to get a boyfriend. I wear a size 16 in jeans right now. I intend to get down to a size 9 before school gets out.

Well I better go, it’s 11:06. My bird needs rest and so do I.

You want to know what’s funny? I remember that guy’s name. I have no idea why I crushed on him, though. I think maybe it was because he hit me with the trombone. I’m sick that way.

And the bird was a cockatiel, my condolence gift for failing driver’s training.

There’s a lot I could say about this entry; how sad it was that I wanted a boyfriend so badly and how sad it was that I thought I had to lose weight to get one. A lot of girls are like this though and it’s wrong. It’s very wrong and I hope I can help my daughter be strong enough to realize that some day. I don’t know when it happened, but I eventually learned that people who aren’t willing to take me as I am just aren’t worth my time.

And I also learned how to drive because you know you can’t snag a man without some wheels.