My mother recently started to sort through all the junk that has been gathering dust in the basement of our childhood home on Long Island, and I have been loving the sporadic packages she mails me of the most random items. I’ve written about the old photos documenting 37 years of bad style and hideous hair as well as the embarrassing journal from my semester abroad in Spain junior year.
Last week I was psyched to receive this book that I had diligently filled out when I was eleven years old. Called “All About Me”, in it I answered a bunch of questions, drew some pictures, glued in some photographs and even scotch-taped a lock of my hair onto one of the pages. (Ew.)
My answers to most of the questions are like a time capsule of awesomeness from the 80s.
My favorite name- Jenna (Jenna and Barry were the girls that every boy drooled over in my group at Merrick Woods Camp the previous summer. I’ll never forget their banana clips, leather Keds and E.G. socks.)
My favorite sport- soccer
My favorite team- Jets, Islanders, Yankees (The fact that I was raised as a Yankees fan makes my husband homicidal.)
My favorite type of clothes- Guess, Benetton, I.D. (Oh, lord. Do you remember those I.D. flannel-ish shirts that looked like they were inside-out and were the rage for precisely one year?)
My favorite song- Open Your Heart and Living on a Prayer
My favorite musical group- Madonna, The Bangles, The Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Janet Jackson (To this day, Erasure’s Wonderland is one of my favorite albums.)
My favorite type of food- Italian food (I could eat baked ziti or stuffed shells every day of the week for the rest of my life, which is probably why I keep failing at my attempts to go vegan.)
My favorite type of drink- chocolate milk
My favorite flower- orchid
My favorite book- The Great Gilly Hopkins, In Summertime it’s Tuffy
My favorite animal- monkey
My favorite movie- Goonies, Vacation, E.T., Spacecamp (Is there a better group of movies anyplace in the history of ever?!)
My favorite movie star- Chevy Chase, Anthony Michael Hall (Rusty, take care of Dinkins. Dad? He bites! Bite him back.)
My favorite month of the year- December
My favorite place in the world- Germany, Florida (That’s fascinating considering I didn’t go to Germany until I was about 32.)
My favorite recreation- swim, ride bikes
My favorite President- Ronald Reagan (No comment. Also, barf.)
My favorite TV show- Who’s the Boss?, Growing Pains
The final page of the book is called “Famous Last Words”, and on it I wrote what must have been my most commonly used phrases. These include riveting, intellectually stimulating terms such as:
“No duh!”
“You wish.”
“Really?!”
“Bugga Brain”
“I WILL!”
“Oh my God.”
“Dweeb” and
“Moron”
Apparently I was an obnoxious little shit-head who liked to call people names and wanted to preserve these barbs in a memory book. Excellent. This one, though, made me gasp aloud when I saw it:
Oh. My. God.
You’re cringing, right? I am literally at a loss for words. What an eleven-year old monster I was, masked behind my good grades and Esprit sweaters. If Lotte started calling people these words she would be grounded forever, so why wasn’t I? How am I supposed to teach my daughter tolerance and compassion when I must have been the meanest of the mean girls, and why don’t I remember being so nasty and hateful?
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Don’t feel so bad. Those words, and others we would never allow our children to utter, weren’t a big deal back then. No one was teaching us what they really meant. They were part of the vernacular. People might argue their use was still inexcusable, but it was a different time, and we now know better. Happens with every generation. Maybe when our kids are grown, it will be unthinkable that gay marriage was ever illegal, or something like that.
Now, to less serious things. I was not so cool. My parents did not buy me designer clothes. We shopped at Sears. I blame it on the fact my dad grew up on a farm, and my mom made her own clothes. Sears was a huge step up.
And I miss 80′s movies. It will never be that good again.
And, uh, I voted for Bush #1 in our middle school mock election in ’87…soooooo….
Also, Germany? Really?
Also, I dressed as Debbie Gibson for Halloween one year. I also didn’t listen to cool music.
I look back on things I said and cringe, but I also remember that I didn’t really realize that those words were talking about real people. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have used them. I was clueless, but not malicious, and I think that’s the case for a lot of us at that age.
That doesn’t make it okay, but it does mean that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for the crime of once having been 11.
H was cleaning out den this weekend, and found a stack of papers and pictures I’d pulled of the “memory boxes” my mom has deposited on me. I cannot wait to scan and post some of them for all sorts of reasons.
Also, be kind to your 11-year-old self, mama. Who knows what was going through that hormone-addled brain when writing all of that.
Oh you stop it we were all horrific at some point when we were younger. How else would we grow up to learn how awful it was and to be better. You’re amazing and fabulous and I love your posts.