We Were Movie Stars

When I was about 9, I was asked to be an extra in "Searching For Bobby Fischer" with Trevor and my friend Kathryn. Her friend's mom was a talent agent and needed a bunch of kids for a scene with a big chess tournament. They were shooting the movie in Toronto, I believe somewhere on the U of T campus.

It was a great experience. There was a good 50 kid extras and in between shoots we were kept in a big room that had unlimited snacks, a courtyard to play in, board games, and a big TV that played "Fern Gully". Sometimes the actors in the movie would come to visit us (so we thought...they might have just wanted to watch Fern Gully, or more likely, to eat). A couple even came to sing songs with us. I think she was Diana from Anne Of Green Gables and he later did "Men in Black" with Will Smith. I'll have to IMDB that later to see if that makes sense.

When we got to the set in the mornings they would send us one by one through wardrobe and make up. We had to bring a couple changes of clothes for them to choose from, and they wanted my blue plaid dress, with my white and pastel glasses, and they French braided my hair each day. I didn't realize it at the time but I personified the geeky chess child.

While shooting, they paired us up at tables with a partner and we were to play chess as fast as we could and use those clicky "your turn" things. My partner was a little Asian girl who also didn't know how to play chess. So we just pretended and made our horsies chase each other. I think at one point our royal families decided to end their battle and have a wedding instead. We got shushed a few times for giggling. Chess players do not giggle.

The audio guys had tiny microphones taped to every few tables or so in order to pick up the ambiance. I recall deciding to keep a microphone for my barbies, and being told that they need to stay taped to the table for the movie instead.
One day we were sat at a table that had one, and we thought that we now had speaking lines in the movie. Each shot of that afternoon we repeated the same serious chess conversation over and over.

There was another scene where we all had to run from the back of the room to the front stage to pat Bobby on the back and congratulate him. Even at the time, I thought that was a weird thing to do, but damn it I was going to run the fastest and get there first. I was quite competitive, you see, plus I really wanted to be on camera.

When the filming was done, we all received a pay cheque. It was the first money I ever made and I was intensely proud of it. I have no idea how much it was for, but I do remember I was allowed to buy a "Fern Gully" VHS with it.

I never ended up watching "Searching For Bobby Fischer", not even to see if you could pick Trevor, Kathryn or I out from the crowd. Who wants to watch a movie about chess anyway?

My First Stitches

Another one of my first memories involved the combination of golf balls, blood and freezies. Let's set this story up in chapter headings, just to shake things up a bit.

Golf Beats Freezie:
My dad was practicing his swing in our Georgetown backyard, facing the woods. Not that anyone would confuse him for an environmentally-conscious man, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was either simply swinging, or using biodegradable balls. Anyway, as it were, my two-year-old self wandered up behind him, wanting to request a Freezie. As would become an unfortunate theme in my later life, I exercised poor timing and was caught mid-swing in the face.

Blood Beats Golf:
This is actually where my memory kicks in. My dad burst into the kitchen, holding me in his arms. My mom ran over yelling "Cope, what happened?!" and held a blue jay cloth to my mouth. When she pulled it away it was saturated with blood. If I wasn't crying before then, I was wailing now!

Freezie Beats Blood:
We went to the hospital to get my face mended. I have no recollection of the actual stitching process, but I remember being told afterward that I was very brave. Then the doctor came back with the biggest Freezie I had yet to see in my young life.

I don't know if the scar on my lip or forehead was from this experience, but I know whichever it was, it was totally worth it.

The Georgetown Snake

This is one of those family memories that has continuously been brought up over the years. I myself have very limited memory of it, but I think it's worth writing down.

When we lived in Georgetown, our house backed up onto a small forest. My dad often hit golf balls into the woods (more on that another time) and would sometimes accidentally mow over a snake when cutting the lawn. We had no back fence so our yard was often subject to woodland visitors.

One day Trevor was out back playing in the sprinkler with a friend when he stepped on a snake with his bare foot.
He started to scream. While my mom rushed outside with me in tow (I was about 2 at the time), Trevor ran into the safety of the house, slamming and locking the door behind him.

Being the early 80's, no one had cell phones and neighbour's were friends, so my mom went next door to call my dad to come home and let us inside. While we waited, we tried to find the offending snake.

We found him in the neighbors bushes. Or rather, my mom and the neighbour found him. Even though they tried to point him out to me, I just couldn't see it. This is the only memory I actually have of this incident...crouching on the cement patio square, staring into the bushes and feeling very angry that I couldn't see the snake.

When my dad got home, he had two upset out kids...one because he saw a snake, and one because she didn't.

My first pair of dangly earrings

One of the paramount moments in becoming a "big girl" was getting my ears pierced before going to kindergarten. Second to that was getting my first pair of dangly earrings.

As somewhat of an ostentatious child, I liked to draw attention to myself (middle child syndrome) so in attempts to highlight the specialty of my dangly earrings, I cleverly hid one each day in the climbers. This was clever on two fronts: 1) that I got attention and 2) that I got a little more time in the climbers which was the Holy Grail of Miss Maynard's class.

The guardian of the climbers was none other than Kermit the Frog. When Kermit was climbing, no one else was. Strange really that I was able to make amends with him so many years after this most hurtful betrayal. As it were, I used to hide an earring daily on the climbers after Kermit had taken his post. After a few minutes on the rug with the class, I'd "discover" my missing earring and get permission to go find it.

This one fateful day, however, my earring was not where I had left it. My fictitious search had borne an actual panicked hunt for my beloved dangly earring. Kermit laughed at me the whole time. Try as I did, I never found that earring, but I did learn a good lesson on lying and showing off.

I suppose I have Kermit to thank for that.

Stupid frog.

A letter to my parents...GOLD

Here is a letter to my parents when I was 17.  The forward and all italics are from Sarah:

And I have something that I've been saving but thought it went well with your second last post and would share it. Dad dug this gem up over the summer. The junk in the brackets will be my mocking.

Why Julie deserves to be treated as a 17 year old

Responsible

• held down stead jobs since 15
• Maintains honours with straight A's
  never had a grade lower than a B
• babysat on regular basis on a Thursday night during school until 1 o'clock am and still managed to go to school on Friday (I imagine that if you didn't, you wouldn't have been allowed to keep that babysitting job)
• When given a time at night to come home at, always is home then or earlier
• Editor of yearbook
• represented all of grade 10 at Hoby Leadership workshop    (You had a lot of difficulty spelling Leadership there and couldn't be bothered to white it out or re-write the letter to fix the mistake... Not going to lie: it undermined you, Julie. I lost a bit of confidence in you there.)

Mature

• most valued yearbook contributor
• Bronze award for academics and extra caricular activities    (Well, Ms. Yearbook Editor, I hope you paid more attention to the spelling in the yearbook than you did with this letter. Also, the inconsistency of capitalization at the beginning of these bullet points...)
• makes own money and pays for everything except medical needs etc. (Which, lucky for them, the government picks up; so you were a freebie for our parents!)
• doesn't smoke,    (Commas do not ever end bullet points. I'd like to inspect the yearbook you edited next time I'm over, please.)
• doesn't drink    (... doesn't tell the truth...)
• doesn't do drugs
• hasn't had allowance since 15
• handles work, school and soccer at once

expectations (Seriously? Underlined title without a capital?)

I want to be able to spend time with my friends. All of my friends work and therefore the only time we are able to get together is at night. The majority of my friends don't have curfew's (Not the correct pluralization.) and those who do are at midnight. During the school year their curfew's are at 10pm. 4 of my friends have their G2's & I plan on getting mine by the end of the summer so transportation is no longer an issue (Oh, boom! I beat you at something; I got mine when I was sixteen!). All I ask for is permission to go out (And, apparently, to take the car after the end of the summer). I argue because your decisions aren't justified as there are no reasonable reasons for them (HATE that sentence.). When I have no obligations for the next day & I am not asking to be out all night, there's no good reason why I should have to stay in. I am basically the ideal daughter (LOVE that.), grades, job, sports, nice, I even have a boyfriend in case you worry I'm out picking up strangers or something (I'm very fond of the last two reasons). With teenagers, you have to give and take (Says the expert who has raised so many teenagers of her own). I give all I am able to give, there is nothing I can give or improve myself on (Your humility, I think, could stand some work.). When you have bad kids, you give them more slack & privliges (Close.), so why benefit the bad & punish the good? I want a midnight curfew, one o'clock on special occasions. I give no more screening in return (Your generosity, also, could probably be improved upon.).

It's a good effort, but I'd give your very first mark below a B for this. Do you remember if they went for it?

Hope you like this at least half as much as I did!

Love,

Sarah

Sh*t my dad says

To borrow from the ever amusing twitter account, my dad says some gems as well. This message will likely be updated frequently.

- On temp dying my hair purple in university: "You look like a pig to market". Translation: in Holland at the livestock markets, they painted coloured stripes down the animals' backs to indicate their price.

- On moving in with Dave: "You don't want to be a used car, do you?" And: "What's your next boyfriend going to think when he finds out you lived with Dave?" (thoughts, Drew?)

- On the police breaking up the party next door: "Oh snap!"

- On observing my nose piercing and Sarah's tattoo: "You girls don't like the way I made you."

- On breaking down our heritage: "My good Dutch kids have been contaminated by the English."

- When I first bought some thongs, my mom was folding the laundry in their room. My dad noticed the underwear and hand delivered them to my room one by one, critiquing them in dismay. Mostly he was terribly unimpressed but enjoyed embarrassing me. My favourite comment was "this isn't big enough to catch a fart!"

- On Sarah deciding to go skydiving: "Wait.  Did you pay the Rogers bill yet?"

My House Rules

We had a bunch of house rules. Some were followed and others not so much. We were spanked as kids sometimes, but the biggest threat of all was the unhappy-face paddle. Reincarnated from a paddle ball, my mom drew a sad face on it with a thick black sharpie, complete with tears. I don't know if my mom knew those were symbolic gangsta murder tears but they certainly got the message across either way. When we were bad, the threat of "don't make me get out the unhappy-face paddle" was all we needed to hear to straighten up. I don't think it was ever actually used though. I wish we still had it; I would hang it on my wall.
We also had the classic "wait until your father gets home" and "1...2...". 3 never actually materialized. Whether from us smartening up or if my mom didn't want to have to follow through with the mystery that happened after 3, I don't know.
We would always try to run when we knew a spank was coming. My dad was good at catching us by the arm as we tried to run by, and we were pretty good at crying before he ever touched us. Fear and threats seem to be the most effective parenting techniques.

Rules:
- Dinner at 5:30 sharp
- No individually packaged snacks. Strictly for school lunches only
- Ask before eating anything that wasn't healthy
- Must split 2 pops between the three of us
- Don't eat the chocolate chips or the baking chocolate
- no colouring on the fire place
- no smushing cheese slices under the coffee table
- Don't walk up the wrong side of the banister
- don't jump on the furniture

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure there were many more.

My household was also very egalitarian. Treats were split equally between us...right down to the mm of pop or meniscus curve of chips.
The only fluctuation for this rules worked in my favour. Neither Trevor or Sarah were "activities" people, so I got to go to all the Brownie and Girl Guide camps, do all the swimming/skating/dance classes I wanted to. I never really felt that "forgotten middle child" thing. I was pretty demanding as I recall.

When Trevor was 8, his allowance was x and his bedtime was y. I could also expect x and y when I turned 8. That was a rhythmic progression until we were teenagers. All of a sudden those rules didn't apply any more because I was a girl. My curfew stayed early despite me pointing out that I was better able to handle myself better than Trevor should I get into an altercation. I also tried to spin the angle that Trevor didn't often use his curfew and that I should be able to use his overage. No dice. Eventually I wised up and started telling them when I'd be home instead of vice versa. Cell phones had entered the picture by then as well, which might have helped my cause.

Neighbourhood kids

Growing up in Brampton was really fun. We had a lot of kids in our street and here are some random recollections of them:

Lindsay and Gregory lived two doors down. Gregory was my age but I was later told that I preferred talking to his mom over him. I used to go ring their door bell and when she answered, I'd say "guess what!" and launch into an epic tale of what I must have considered of monumental importance. Being that I was about 5 at the time, I'm sure it revolved around my cabbage patches or the bugs that I found.

When the they's moved out, Jennifer and Billy moved in. Jennifer was too old to be my friend but she was nice. Billy was a bit tough and intimidating to me. Once when we were all out front, I found a worm the size of a gardner snake and thought he'd be impressed if I showed it to him. Unfortunately for both me and that worm, he reacted by throwing it on the road. I wanted to go get it and put it back under the rock where I found it, but I was too embarrassed by his reaction, so I didn't. Eventually a car came and ran it over. I still feel terrible about that.
Once I saw Jennifer kissing her boyfriend while sitting on the ping pong table. Might seem a silly thing to remember but he was Chinese and it was the first time the concept of interracial dating occurred to me. I think his name was Ozzy and he drove a motorcycle.


I was never particularly close with our neighbour's who lived three doors down. Cristina was a couple years older and Stephanie a couple years younger. I do recall Cristina throwing my cabbage patch doll Angela into the garage. She got a white scratch on her face and I never forgave her for that needless act of violence. I'm sure Angela didn't deserve it.
An embarrassing memory I have of Stephanie is once while we were playing in her room I was so distracted by the clutter that I started cleaning her room for her. When my mom came to collect me for dinner, their mother commented that Steph's room has never been so clean. I said "all you have to do now is vacuum it and you're good to go". Did I EVER get an earful on the walk home on manners!! Mom was sooo embarrassed.
Michael was Sarah's friend since they were the same age. When they were a bit older he would come over to dinner, I think mostly as entertainment. Probably one of the funniest kids I know. He's recently filmed an indie zombie movie with some friends. I can't wait to see it.

Shanna and Cassie lived directly next door. Shanna was a year or two younger than me and Cassie was Sarah's age. Shanna and I used to play swimming lessons on our front lawns, which involved one if us jumping off the porch and running around in crazy circles with the other one following as if we were on a water slide. The game lasted until the eventual fall down, which meant we splashed in the pool. Then we'd switch. I'm laughing out loud as I type this, it's so ridiculous.
My favourite game with them was throwing the ball over the fence. It was exciting not knowing where the ball would launch from.
Once I turned 19 I have Shanna my old ID. Two years later when she was 19 she returned the ID in a thank you card left in our mailbox.

Adam and Ashley lived a few doors down as well. Closer to Sarah's age, I never really played with them, but once Ashley was mad at Sarah and reacted by taking off all her clothes and riding her tricycle home naked. My mom ran after her and dressed her on the sidewalk.
Their uncle Tom lived with them and was a cowboy. At least that's what he told us. We believed him because he had a hat, wore the boots and had a cactus in his room. Thinking about this now, it is incredibly inappropriate that I was ever in his bedroom. My assumption now is that he wasn't entirely of sound mind.

Laurie's family lived down the street; specifically 15 houses away. I was their Kimmy Gibbler and was always over. I often went there in bare feet and thought they were really prissy when they made me put on socks before coming inside. Now I know that my feet must have been filthy and their carpets were quite light. Their house always smelt like "clean"...mine smelt like cigars and crayons.
My family never went out for dinner. McDonald's was a very special treat for us, and very rare at that. The first time I went to Pizza Hut and Swiss Chalet was with Laurie's family. I thought they were rich because they went out for dinner and Laurie and Sarah went to camp all summer. Years later Laurie told me that she thought we were rich because we had so many toys.
Once when I was over for dinner, Laurie's sister Sarah was angry at us for something (probably Nintendo related) and said at the table "you know, Dad says you don't have to have Julie over all the time". Awkward silence. It confused me because I never stayed without being invited. My dad referred to Laurie as his fourth kid so she was at my place as much as I was at hers.

This is a long post. 6 hour bus rides can do that to you (PS: I'm in Peru!)

Nanny's house in Connecticut

I am bored on a bus in Peru right now...massive traffic jam on the way to Puno, allegedly caused by some race cars...so I guess I'll get lost in some memories.

Nanny lived in the States until after Grampa Les died. Her house was two levels with a dark wood paneled stair case. One of those kinds that goes a couple steps up, has a landing where you turn and continues the rest of the way up along the wall. As a child I was quite convinced that there was a secret door just a step or two above that landing that led to a different world. That world looked suspiciously like Fraggle Rock, now that I think of it.

JJ lived next door with his grandparents. We liked going to visit Nanny so we could play with JJ. He had this triangle red bum scooter that you sat on and wiggled and it would ride up and down the driveway. Mom and dad bought us each one when we got back to Canada.

There was a beach close by where we found these long tubular sea shells. Nanny said the seagulls smash them open on rocks and eat the slug inside. Dad used his cigar to smoke one out to show us. I remember that it smelled and I felt bad when they chucked it onto the water and a gull grabbed it. Seemed to me that it was doing just fine until we came along.

Then mom told us about how when she was a little girl, she was at the beach in England playing with her favourite doll, throwing it into the air and catching it. A seagull swooped by and snatched it out of the air and flew away with it. They chased it as far as they could but weren't able to recover her doll. I recall that story breaking my heart.

A blog of frogs

I had a host of frogs throughout my childhood. Here are the stories of some of them:

Chuckie, or perhaps it was Ernie: I found Chuckie the toad while biking one day. There were some boys at a playground throwing rocks at him, trying to kill him. I went over there to save him, but I don't remember if there was an altercation of sorts or if the little assholes took off when I approached (they were younger than me), but I collected him and road home one handed. He ended up having a nice set up in the aquarium below the fish. It must have been a terrifying day for that poor guy, first a stoning, then strangulation on a bike, and finally forcible confinement. I tried to make up for it by supplying all the crickets he could eat, but I eventually returned him to wense he came.

Ernie, or perhaps Chuckie: this toad I just found and tried to relocate in my backyard. He likely wasn't impressed as I don't believe I saw him again.

Mr Ed: he existed.  That's all I remember of his life tail.  (<-- that's a pun, not a spelling mistake) (Yes, I know that toads don't have tails, but they did as tadpoles, so my pun is still correct)

Prince: my tiniest toad was a firebelly given to my as a Bday gift from Chris o'flarity. He required a very tropical and warm tank, which I painstakingly outfitted for him. Alas, he too made a break for his original habitat (which was a great deal further away in the tropics somewhere) and his blackened dehydrated body under the bookshelf was found months later.

I had too many frogs to remember their names...or perhaps they didn't hold the same fascination for me.  I know there was at least one "Kermit" in there, so lets assume they were all named Kermit.

Sarah, myself, and possibly a Kermit

Kermit 1 and 2: abducted from the pipe under the foot of my grandma's driveway in St George. These two unwilling buggers were sequestered in my first turtle home (plastic circle, small bridge and palm tree with a lid). Before running out to play one afternoon back in Brampton, I kindly thought they'd like some fresh air and sun so I put them out on the deck to enjoy the afternoon.
Later my mom found their boiled bodies floating in the little turtle river. That is when I learned about the greenhouse effect.

The Albino Kermit's: bought from Big Al's pet store, I decided to bring the ugly little creatures to school. That's where they died.  I think from starvation because I never really figured out how to feed them.

Kermit 3 and 4: when we dug a fish pond for our backyard I really wanted frogs to live there too. Apparently they didn't agree because they , like all the others, left. I was beginning to sense a pattern about the strength of amphibians internal homing devises.

Smiley: Smiley was a lime green tree frog. The kind that needs plants, water, heat lamps, and a very controlled environment. Read: this guy was going no where! He was super cute and very shiny, very enjoyable to look at and poke. But that was the extent of his attraction. He did nothing. Hung glued to the side of the aquarium. Blinked for pleasure.
I later brought him back to the pet store for credit towards my iguana.

More on that another day.

Operator

My nanny was babysitting us while my parents were on vacation and Trevor and I were watching tv in their room. For whatever reason he dared me to call the operator, so not being one to back down from a dare (especially an easy lame one) I did. On the other end of the phone, it sounded like the operator said "hello creature", to which I replied "hello stupid" and hung up the phone. Silly me didn't consider that operators by the nature of their jobs have access to both phones and phone numbers, proven by the fact that she promptly called back. Instead of answering the phone and thwarting her attempt to yell at me, I chose instead to hide behind a chair. Of course my nanny answered the call. She apparently didn't care whether or not the operator had called me a creature...she was pissed.

It was poor timing for a dare as well, as my parents returned that night. Again, that chair was my refuge until dinner when I thought enough time had passed that nanny had forgotten about the call.

She didn't, and it became dinner table conversation.

Earliest Memories

Here are a few of my earliest memories, in no particular order or relation. That's what you're going to get from this blog...a spattering of nonsense that probably doesn't interest anyone but me. And potentially anyone I happen to write about. I'll try to keep the bitchy-teen-angst infused comments to a minimum this time.

We had just moved from Georgetown into our new Brampton house, which would have made me three. Our basement was unfinished, dark, and potentially full of monsters. Trevor, 6 at the time, was scared to go down there and as an act of defiance and bravery, I decided to upshow him and go down there, alone, in the dark. It was terrifying and I was pretty sure I was going to die, but well worth it in the end. This was probably the turning point in our relationship.

Again, basement story:

The neighbourhood kids were all in our basement, and as dumb kids do, we were running the circular path around the stairs for no particular reason. As I ran by, I accidentally knocked down a 2x4 into the path, but as the race was on, I didn't want to stop and pick it back up. In fact, I probably prided myself on a successful obstacle for the next runner to overcome. The next runner was unfortunately my toddler little sister, who stepped on the board and got a nail through her little shoe, into her little foot. I feel TERRIBLE!!!!!

That last story I held onto in shame until just last year, when I finally felt it was time to tell Sarah what I had done. She obviously didn't remember, as she was really young, but upon confirmation with our dad, he said that it didn't happen. Perhaps she just fell and there was no nail, or maybe there was a nail and she narrowly missed it...or maybe I dreamed the whole thing up. Don't know, but it's still a memory. So onto the blog it goes.

The day I got Blackie:

Mom had told me that I could get a kitten as soon as the fences were put up in our backyard. I was sitting in the kitchen looking out the patio doors, emphatically telling her that the fences were there, but I still didn't have a kitten. I was really angry about it and sulking my five-year-old face off.
Aunt Marg and likely Nanny opened our front door, as they came over every Wednesday for lunch. I was too sulky to go say hi, so I just sat slumped in the kitchen against the back wall. When I looked over, Aunt Marg was carrying a little black kitten and handed him to me. I vividly remember that moment, and how happy she looked to be able to give him to me. I felt nearly sick with guilt for being so angry at my mom.

Why is it that my earliest memories are charged by guilt?

Proof that I'm a thoughtless and unfeeling person:

When Grampa Les died, he and Nanny lived in Connecticut. Mom and Dad only took baby Sarah to the funeral with them and left Trevor and I with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Lambert for the weekend. I was probably about 4 if Sarah was a baby. It was the first time they'd been away from me, and it was over my birthday. I remember being very excited to spend a sleep over weekend with A Caroline and U Lambert, because they had a pinball machine in the basement and the little mushroom houses for their smurf figurines. Before Mom and Dad left us there, they gave me a birthday present to open. It was a girl-transformer, which transformed from a cat into a lipstick. It thrilled the shit out of me. Grampa Les, who?

Random, the day I became a "Big Girl":

One afternoon before I was old enough to go to school, I asked Mom to take me to the park. I decided to test her to see if she'd let me into the stroller and was really surprised when she let me. Feeling pretty pleased with my lazy ingenuity, I took the stroller ride congratulating myself the whole way. Until we passed my brother's friend Lindsay. She was 3 years older than me, and someone who I considered a "Big Girl". I was humiliated at being caught hitching a stroller ride, and never rode in one again.

Random, possibly the origin of my bathroom insecurities

More on the subject of Lindsay, she was an only child, had two cats, and super long hair. Though I wasn't aware of this word at the time, to me she seemed very bohemian. Once when all the kids were playing hide and seek, I thought she was going to go hide in the bathroom, so I followed her in there. She wasn't in there to hide, and didn't seem to mind taking a poo in front of me. Also very bohemian. She explained that when you got to go, you got to go, and once her mom didn't poo for a very long time and the doctor needed to sit his hand up her bum and take the poo out. I really wish I didn't know that story. When I went to high school and Lindsay was there, that story was all I could think about every time I ran into her, with her cropped green hair. Confirmed: Bohemian.

Short and Sweet...wallpaper:

My first room in the Brampton house had strawberry shortcake wallpaper. I was quite convinced that it was scratch and sniff, and used to sniff the different characters all the time. In fact, I remember giving it a lick, just to confirm whether it was also tasty wallpaper; it was just regular wallpaper flavour.

I haz a blog

Though I've never had one before, I'm pretty sure I started the whole blog movement when I used to let all my friends read my diary.  I have blotchy recollections of sitting on bunk beds at camp, having my diary passed around the girls so they could read my account of what we did that day.  Sometimes that got me in trouble...I never put it together that you cannot write bitchy-angsty-adolescent comments about your friends and then expect them to understand you were just in a bad mood that day when they read it later.  Mostly the diary pass-around was a way of looking for attention in an "aren't I clever", "don't I write well", "look at me, look at me, look at me" kind of way.

Like many people, I'm sure, joining the blog movement so many years after it ceased to be popular, I was inspired to do this while reading "The Happiness Project".  Which I thoroughly enjoyed (despite the shitty circumstances which led to me needing to read about how to be happy) although this is less a project of happiness and more of a way to document my memories rather than call attention to me in a "look at me, look at me, look at me", "aren't I clever", "don't I write well" kind of way.  I have a shitty memory and every now and then a spark of something will come  back at me and I try desperately to keep it filed at close hand.  But I never succeed in that.  Now that the internet and the good people at Apple have created the iCloud, everything I ever write or post will live on in eternity, long after my memory expires.

So here we are.  First post.  One thing I need to look into is WHO is reading this, HOW did they find it, and do I actually want them to read it?  I think I'd prefer to keep this to myself, except for the odd few friends that I want to look at me and think that I'm clever and a good writer.