If I had a time machine....

So I've been in the process of downsizing everything. There's much sorting and whatnot while I basically figure out what I don't need in my life and either sell it or Goodwill it. Of course I'm finding lots of things to distract me, during the process, but the real treat (usually for someone other than me) is when I go looking for something and run across my old diaries from middle and high school. I try to hide them from myself every time I do. My mom says they're good to keep for when you're older but I'm older now and still don't know why I don't just burn them. I can never keep myself from reading them again, even though I know the sheer embarrassment of what I used to be is enough to run away and become a recluse.

I had this thing where I would always address my diary. Each post would start off saying "Hey Diary" or "Hey, it's me again" and then end with me making up an excuse for why I had to go and then signing.....yes, actual cursive signing, my name. It was like I was writing a letter every time to this person named Diary...only much, much lamer.

One of my earlier posts from high school was written one night while I was up watching a concert on TV, performed by my current favorite singer at the time, Marc Anthony. At one point I write something about watching him and then say "He's so dreamy!" as if that was a usual thing to say. And yes, I did slant my writing in the diary to look like italics. It wasn't "he's so sexy" or "he's so hot"...Nope. I go for the vocabulary that nobody has used since 1965. I guess I can blame that on my family moving around so much while growing up, so I was pretty sheltered and didn't have much experience with what most girls got at that age. I didn't watch any teen shows and I certainly didn't have many female friends...or many friends period, for that matter, so most of my "boy experience" was gained from books, manga or comics, or suuuuper cheesy movies which tended to use some of the old school vernacular and situations that would never happen in real life.

So here I was acting like a fake girly girl just so I could feel like I was like the other girls in my school. Being a tom-boy in an all-girls high school kind of puts that pressure on you.

I continue writing about how "dreamy" Mr. Anthony is and then change the subject to write how I'd gone and gotten a glass of my mother's box wine and that, quote, "Tee hee! I'm so bad!"

I'll repeat it again in case any one missed it. Here I was enjoying the TV coverage of the concert and had helped myself to ONE small sized glass of my mother's shitty box wine. Now several glasses at 15-16 is something to brag about but here I was with my one little glass, pretending I was such a bad girl for it and acting like it was the taboo of the century.

My parents were smart when it came to teaching my brothers and I about alcohol. When we were old enough to fully comprehend what it was (teens) they allowed us sips of their's every so often. It was also at this age that my father taught me about real beer and the amazing labor that goes into making it...not like this piss water that most big-name companies make here in the US.
This wasn't bad parenting. Actually it was just the opposite. What it did was, in a sense, make us realize that it wasn't a big deal and not something you need to go overboard on. I wouldn't say it numbed us to it because when we all got to college we enjoyed it thoroughly like most normal college students. But it helped us appreciate it more and kept us from going crazy after hitting 21. By then we were like "oh yeah, a few drinks would be great."  Not like "Wooo yeah baby! I'm 21 so let's parteh!!"
Though, on a side note, my mom did totally throw me a private 21st mini-kegger at home, with some of my close friends. :) Thanks Mom. Way better that getting shit-faced at some random bar.

What my parents did really helped my brothers and I mature about alcohol much faster than our peers, and for that I thank them. However, like I said, I was undergoing peer pressure in high school to be a girl and to be a rebel teen. But because of my upbringing with alcohol, and respect for my parents in general, I could only bring myself to take one tiny glass...which for some reason felt like it was groundbreaking nonetheless. I'm sure if I'd kindly asked my mom before she went to bed, " Hey, Mom would you mind if I had a small glass of your wine while I watch the concert tonight?" she might have agreed. So I don't know why I felt it was a big deal but who the hell knows what any teenager is thinking?

And that's not even the worst of it. I was even MORE socially awkward about boys and social stuff in middle school! When I was 13 I was totally about boys. You'd think that was all completely normal, as like most 13yr old girls I fawned over the cute ones (even if they were total d-bags), had a list of cutest ones I liked (for me it was apparently Branden, Levi, Gorden, and Miguel), and wrote about them in my diary. But no. It really wasn't like a normal girl because the boy I liked the most, Branden, was a total douche and hated me...yet I drooled after him to the point where I knew all his classes, locker number, locker combination number, phone number, bus number, address, had 2 candid photos of him, torn bits of paper that I found hanging out of his locker, and a hate letter from him......

Don't belive me? One entry apparently reads (word for word including spelling), "We made Snow Bisciuts in Home Ec. and while we were eating our Bisciuts Branden came over and, just a min. my duck giga pet is calling. Ok I'm back, ah we were just getting to the GOOD part, as I was saying Branden game over to our group and asked if he could have one of our bisciuts!"
Another entry reads, "Branden said probly one or two words in class. Gosh he is CUTE!!!" Notice how it wasn't to me he said these words to. It was just in class...
And this didn't happen just once. I did it again in 8th grade to some poor guy named Eliot. Got hate notes from him too... You'd think I would have learned the first time, but no. I needed to learn the hard way twice before I realized that's not the way you go about displaying your affections for someone.

No wonder I got teased so much... between my wretched attempts at socializing, my 3 giga-pets that I apparently carried everywhere (duck, cat, and dinosaur), being home-school prior, and being totally obsessed with cartoons and comics...I'm surprised I wasn't left as a smear stain on the school hallways.