My friend Jenny.
I’ve known her since middle school, although I don’t think we’ve seen each other in person since I moved away at the end of eighth grade. Maybe we saw each other at Young’s Jersey Dairy one time during college?
At any rate, she blogged about me the other day. Perhaps she did it just to see if I was paying attention. At the time, I wasn’t. But now I am.
She not only blogged about me, saying all kinds of nice things about how well I think and implying that I don’t drink to excess, she also quoted notes I wrote to her in middle school. I think we called it junior high at the time, but for some reason, I’ve shifted completely over to the phrase, “middle school” to describe that period of my life I would really rather not think about, if at all possible.
Had I known back then that those notes would survive two decades after they were written, would I still have written them? Probably, but I would still look back and wish I hadn’t.
Jenny is the person who got me onto Facebook. Facebook is another thing you probably ought not to do if you want the past to stay in the past. In my experience, Facebook is where the past lurks, just waiting to jump out and put you right back into that linoleum hallway where you needed to tease your bangs, peg your pants, and never, ever use a backpack if you wanted to avoid daily persecution.
Jenny is also probably a major reason I started blogging publicly (I’d been doing it in a dark, password-protected closet for a few years before I began Imperfect Happiness). And lo and behold: apparently the past lurks on blogs, too.
I have no excerpts from notes from Jenny because, being a decent friend, I burned all notes from middle school about the time I graduated college. Actually, I don’t know what I did with them. They were in an otherwise empty 5-gallon plastic ice cream tub (empty of ice cream, full of angst and nicknames and embarrassing anecdotes written on intricately folded pieces of notebook paper) in my mom’s attic. They could still be there. If they are, I hope they’re covered in cat pee so the only reasonable thing anyone could do with them is to burn them. If not, I’m sure my mom is preparing to mail them to me even as I type this.
I do recall that Jenny and a handful of other friends (Wendy, Maggie) were the only things that made that period of my life tolerable. Having them in my life now, albeit only online, is nice because they’re pretty incredible women, and I feel privileged to know them and still be in touch with them to some degree. But it’s also a bit like poking at a bruise. It’s more difficult to forget about an awkward phase of my life when there are people out there who not only remember me during that phase but also talk about me during that phase.
Not everything I remember from then is negative. But even the positive things are pretty embarrassing still. Like how even now I can’t sing the proper words to REM’s “Stand” because we made up words along the lines of “Write for the Power of the Pen!” (Power of the Pen was a writing competition in which we all (Jenny, Maggie, Wendy, et al) participated in seventh and eighth grade. In eighth grade, our team made it to the state competition).
Or once when I dressed up as a clown for some reason over a non-Halloween weekend and then discovered during homeroom Monday that there were phantom remnants of the makeup still on my face.
Or playing with the Ouija board with Jenny and learning that she was going to marry someone named, “Kert,” and I was going to marry the guy I had a crush on at the time (of course). Neither of these things came to pass, incidentally.
And I remember Jenny giving me a dance lesson: “First you go limp [Jenny goes limp], and then you shake [Jenny shakes to the beat].”
So, now Jenny’s my blogging buddy, which means that we offer one another encouragement to write. And while I didn’t really see Jenny’s post quoting my notes in this light when I first read it, I suppose that’s just what Jenny gave me with that post: encouragement to write. And about this month’s focus, too!
And just for the record, not only can I now spell “varicose veins,” I also have them.
This blog post will self-destruct in 5…4…3…2…
Imperfect Happiness 
That’s crazy that Jenny still has those notes. I don’t even think I have my high school yearbooks let alone note from junior high twenty plus years ago. I think that if someone I knew found something from back then I would probably be utterly embarassed at first and then laugh it off because who cares really about your life as a twelve year old. The current version is much better!
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Oh man! I am so that person who saved all the notes from junior high and high school. In fact, I have them in a binder organized by person who gave them to me, and possibly in date order. OCD, anyone? 😉 Anyhoo…I also have all my old journals and what not. We all have memories from our pasts, but I think it’s hard to recall one’s own voice from any time other than the present. That’s why I save those things. I don’t look at them very often, but when I do it’s like being in a time machine. In a way it’s like being there for my past self at times when she felt so alone. If that makes any sense… 🙂
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I like the idea of being there for your past self.
I don’t look at my old journals any more than I look at my old notes, although I do keep them (I think the oldest I have I started when I was 10. Great stuff in there, for sure. I seem to recall writing in the style of the Anne of Green Gables books for a good chunk of time). I do enjoy reading old school papers. I have one I wrote in eighth grade about Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I read the book again in college and it was interesting to see how my perspective had changed. I don’t know why the journals are so embarrassing to me and the school papers aren’t.
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That was the most innocuous note I could imagine. I feel kind of cheated. I was all amped up for some juicy embarrassing exposure. I can almost guarantee that any surviving notes from my jr or sr high school years would get me ostracized from my current social circles in a heartbeat.
…hoping none of my childhood friends read this comment.
Anyway your blog is a gem. I’m pretty sure that you will never regret sharing your experience this way, and your readers would definitely feel the loss if you quit. Don’t be a quitter!
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Thanks, Tucker! Yes, I’m guessing that’s about the most innocuous one in the bunch. I’m grateful to Jenny for picking that one. I don’t know that I would be ostracized for anything I wrote in any of the other notes, but I’d certainly be mortified.
And don’t worry…I’m not quitting the blog. It’s too much a part of my life to drop right now. Plus, it’s a fair amount different from middle school note-writing. For one thing, the only guy I have a crush on is the one I’m married to, and I don’t feel all that embarrassed if people know I think he’s cute.
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hmmm I am pretty sure I would not be nearly as calm as you.
I have a very clear memory of being in the 6th grade and me being bored and writing a fan (love) letter to Corry Haim. My “friend” came by and proceeded to grab it from me and start reading it aloud to the whole class. I was mortified…
I suppose the good thing in all of this is the fact that you are an adult and you now know people have very short attention spans and usually could care less. In the 6th grade I was sure my world was over and that I wold be teased every day. Turns out it was funny, even to 6th graders, for about an hour and then everyone moved on.
Please continue to write, I love reading your blog.
Long story short, I would have mixed feelings as well. 0_o
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When I first started reading Jenny’s post and saw that she was going to quote my twelve-year-old self, I was incredibly nervous. There are a couple of things she could have said that I think I still would have felt absolutely mortified about. But seeing the portions she selected to post on her blog, I feel fairly confident that she’s still my friend. I sure don’t want to piss her off, though.
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So you have stalkers from way back! I’d be jealous, but those notes are too funny 😉
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In retrospect, those friends from middle school were the first people with whom I played with writing in the sense that we goofed around with writing together and became comfortable in that medium. I was so open in my writing in those days and even almost got beat up for it once (maybe one day I’ll share that story. Or maybe I’ll save it for my printed memoirs). I never expected blogging to lead me to reframe my middle school experiences in a positive light, but it’s possible that just might happen.
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