I mentioned before that I dismantled my junior high/high school scrapbook over Christmas, but what I failed to mention was that I apparently saved everything. I have a napkin (complete with Chee-to dust) from that one time I spied on a boy who worked at Subway, and a straw from that one time I went to the movies with so-and-so, and obviously that is ridiculous. Goodbye, Chee-to dusted Subway napkin from 1989! Farethewell, straw that I remember nothing about! I will not miss you.

However, there are many funny things that I did keep, such as a picture from our school’s production of Romeo and Juliet where Tybalt, supposedly dead, is popping up to see what’s going on, a vow my friend Vicki Nelson and I took to not do it with boys (we named penises “Ricky Stocking” and closed all of our correspondence with “Ricky Stocking can wait!”), and programs from various choir shows.

One choir show in particular keeps cracking me up. If I were assigned the task of creating the world’s worst choir show song line-up, I could not have chosen more appropriately terrible songs. The strange part is that they are all — with one notable exception — hideously out of date. It was 1990, but apparently the show had a secret theme of 1984. 1984 in hell.

Again, it was 1990. So why were these some of the songs performed?

“Make It Real” (by the Jets, yo)
“Always” (“Girl, you are to me all that a woman should be and I dedicate my life to you always”)
“Funky Town”

Really.

There were also some show tunes, someone singing “New York, New York,” two dudes singing the Judds song “Grandpa,” a Carpenters song thrown in for good measure, and then my friend Gram did the unspeakable and sang “Just Can’t Get Enough” by Depeche Mode. And played the guitar! What, what?! “Make It Real” sung by a homely boy sitting wistfully on a wooden stool, and then guitars and awesomeness and a light show designed by an eleventh-grader? Bring it on! More, please!

Anyway.

I’ve also been digging through my extensive files for suitable material to submit to Sarah Brown‘s Cringe book, and am sort of shocked to discover that I was not interesting or funny or capable of spelling the word “weird” correctly from the ages of 13-17. Seriously. My diaries are vast wastelands of misspelled boringness and utter obliviousness. I report what I say to people and what they say back and I totally miss the point. I do not know why I was in honors classes. I did not Get It. No matter what It was, it went over my head: what boys said to me, what girls said to me, what my parents said to me, what I saw on television, what I read, what I listened to on the radio (see jar, bread in) what was happening to the world around me…none of it penetrated* my cone of dumb. It’s very strange to read. Not interesting strange or funny strange, just…sort of icky strange.

*Speaking of penetration, Vicki Nelson and I both graduated high school pristine virgins, and then let Ricky Stocking into our lives the week after graduation. Uh, with different boys. Who were best friends. And who both had waterbeds.