In which I cringe at the thought of my high school journalsMay 12th, 2008 @ 7:01 am
For my twelfth birthday my parents bought me my first real journal. It was dark blue, hard bound and had my name engraved in gold on the front cover. I was excited for the day to be over, so I could curl up on my bed, pen in hand, and write my first entry in my new journal.
I wasn’t sure what to write. Or how to write it. I took a cue from every TV show I’d ever seen and started with:
Dear Diary,
Today is my birthday.
And then I sort of drew a blank on what else to write. So much so that I really wasn’t that loyal to my journal. Sure I would write someone every few weeks, but I didn’t become a daily journal writer until I got into junior high and fell madly in love with Shadrach Roundy.
Shadrach Roundy was a grade older then me, and thus attended high school. The only time I would see him was when my bus from the junior high made a stop at the high school to pick up more kids. Every other day I would see Shadrach walking from his last class back inside the building to his locker.
That’s it. I saw this kid for a total of about five minutes each week. And it was only through the bus window. I never talked to him. I never waved to him. I never tried to have him notice me. I just oogled him through the window.
And then I went home each night and logged into my nifty journal whether or not I had seen Shadrach Roundy that day. I also made it a point to write down what he had been wearing, who he had been walking with, and how dreamy I thought he was.
Dude, it’s a good thing I had that journal.
I don’t remember when this fascination with Shadrach Roundy started. I think maybe I saw him at a church function and feel madly in love with him. It sure didn’t happen because of a magical encounter since Shadrach Roundy and I never spoke a single word to each other. Not once. Not ever.
During my three years in high school I continued to keep up with my daily journal writing. And for those three years my journal entires continued to be solely based on Shadrach Roundy:
I passed Shadrach Roundy in the hall today after I left English class. I think he smiled at me.
Shadrach Roundy is wearing his blue baseball team shirt today. It’s my favorite. It makes his eyes shine.
Today Shadrach Roundy had one some new white tennis shoes. His feet are so small and cute. I hope our kids have his feet.
My dad drove me past Shadrach Roundy’s house today. I think I saw his mom through the kitchen window. She’s seems so nice.
Of course he was always referred to in the journal by his full name, and of course I always journaled about what he wore that day. And, of course, I never got up the nerve to actually speak real live words to Shadrach Roundy. He was simply out of my league. Speaking to him would have opened up the opportunity for rejection. It was much easier to worship Shadrach Roundy from afar and merely dream of the day when our eyes would meet on the dance floor at prom, he would then walk over to ask me to dance, and eventually ask me to marry him.
We would live happily ever after.
Gag. I was such a loser.
It wasn’t that Shadrach Roundy was so popular and such a snob that he wouldn’t have talked to me. He came from a good family and, I think, he really was a nice guy. I’m sure if I would have approached him he would have been pleasant and cordial. I don’t think he would have fallen madly in love with me, but he wouldn’t have been rude.
Shadrach Roundy just wasn’t that type of person.
Which made me love stalk him even more.
Shadrach Roundy didn’t date much. Until the end of my junior hear when he hooked up with a girl in my grade. They began dating and even though I wanted to hate her, I couldn’t. She was just a nice girl. Dang it. I wanted to trip her when she walked down the hall. I wanted to key her car and write bad things about her on the bathroom walls. But I couldn’t damn it. She was just so likable.
No wonder Shadrach Roundy liked her and not me.
Since Shadrach Roundy was a year older then I was, he graduated and moved on with his life before my senior year even started. And so did I. My journal (journals, actually, since I now had three completely full journals) devoted to Shadrach Roundy sat untouched on my book shelf. When I moved away to college, the journals were boxed up and stored with the rest of my junk in the basement.
A couple of years ago, while in Utah visiting friend and family, my mom handed me the box containing my journals. She was cleaning out her house and wanted me to take my crap back with me to Seattle. The King and I had driven to Utah, so we had our car and plenty of room for my boxes. During the 14 hour car ride back to Seattle I decided to bust out my old journals and revisit my past.
The car ride was long and I was bored. I was also feeling brave.
I started to read my journals, starting on my first entry on my twelfth birthday, outloud to The King. He sat there (he had no choice, since he was the one driving) and listened as I read through three years of journals all about Shadrach Roundy. At times he forgot he was reading about his wife’s childhood. He forgot he knew how the story was going to end.
“When do Isabel and Shadrach Roundy go on their first date?”, he asked half way through journal number two.
“You know I never actually talked to Shadrach Roundy, right?”
“What? You liked this kid enough to document his every wardrobe choice and you never spoke to him?”
“Never.”
And then I continued reading outloud.
I finished reading the journals and going through the newspaper clipping about Shadrach Roundy (or anyone he knew or was related to) and closed them back up with the rubber bands to make sure nothing was lost. I put my journals back in the box in the back seat of the car and we continued on our way home to Seattle.
I joked with The King about finding Shadrach Roundy and just shipping him the journals with a note telling him he might as well have them. I mean, come on, they were more about him then they were about me. It would be more useful for his posterity to have them then my own. (Dude, teenage Babboo would mock me so hard for those journals.) Of course when I google Shadrach Roundy’s name, nothing comes up. At least not for the right Shadrach Roundy.
I wonder if I could just mail the journals to his mom’s house?
If I did do that, what would Shadrach Roundy find creepier, my three journals devoted to him, the fact that I mailed them to his mom’s house, or the current picture of me, looking much better then I did in high school, that I’ll include in this shipment to his mom?
So tell me, what were your high school journals like? And um, does anyone know how I can get in touch with Shadrach Roundy?
——————-
Head over to SeattleMomBlogs to read about what we all did for fun a few weekends ago. And enter to win a chance for a FREE WEEKEND at the Great Wolf waterpark!
Addictions · Back in the Day · I Rock
Becky
said,
May 12, 2008 at 7:16 pm
My entire 9th grade journal is devoted to M. Miller, who I loved beyond words. He sat in front of me in seminary and I flirted and flirted and flirted with him forever. I would see him at the Palace (remember the Palace?!) and moon over him. I found out years later he’d liked me, but had never given me the chance b/c his friend John had liked me. This was quite lucky, actually. After his mission, M. Miller was kind of a dork. I think I dogdged a bullet there.
And, if Shadrack Roundy is who I think he is, his mom would just think those journals were swell. She was the happiest person I ever met.
Liza
said,
May 12, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Ok, I am going to cling to the hope that for poor Shadrach’s sake, you have given him this awesome pseudonym, selected to drive home the point that he was a nice churchgoing boy from a nice churchgoing family. I hope he’s hotter than this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadrach_Roundy
My journals run off and on from 6th grade to law school, and nearly all are equally embarrassing, if not significantly more so. They also, um, tended to be fairly explicit about what I might have been imagining doing with these people I was mostly not ever dating.
Liza
said,
May 12, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Oh yeah, and even more on point, the ones from 7th & 8th grade were mostly about a beautiful boy who took the same city bus to high school that I took to middle school. I had more contact with that guy than you had with Shadrach, but not by much.
Kerri Anne
said,
May 12, 2008 at 7:43 pm
My elementary and junior high journals are a particularly horrific shade of Horrible. Exhibit: I dedicated entries to my recently dead mouse, Martin, and confessed my undying love for Val Kilmer.
There is even photographic evidence: http://tinyurl.com/58×8xj
In related news, I was super suave with a super-soaker.
Stephanie
said,
May 12, 2008 at 8:01 pm
I have a journal around the time of my first love and those are whoppers. I was a bit of a mess for him and nothing could stop me. I kept writing in a journal until I was probably about 18 and then stopped. I love the ones when I first started dating my now husband. They express my undying love for him in such a young innocent way. They are so sweet to read. I also have all of our cards/letters to each other and they throw on the sap factor. I can’t wait to let our kids read them though!
Kathleen
said,
May 12, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Oh, man, can I relate. I found my journals recently, too. And they were very painful to read, even the ones I wrote in more recent years, like after I was married. But it’s my early journals that take the cake. In high school, my obsessive nature really came to the fore with the boys I stalked — er, loved. There were two boys — C and P, I’ll call them, because who knows, I’d hate for them to google and find this — I was obsessed with. OBSESSED. At one point I knew their license plate numbers, phone numbers, parents’ names and birthdays, siblings’ names and birthdays, what they’d had for breakfast, blah blah blah you name it. Sadly, I can still tell you both of their birthdays…how sad is it that I can remember their birthdays but not my stepmom’s? Pretty sad…
heidikins
said,
May 12, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I have a similar obsession from junior high and high school…and some version of his name is still my email password… We spoke once or twice, but it was mostly me saying “sorry” for, ya know, being in the hall or catching him looking at me, or something… goodness, I was so pathetic!
Great post!
xox
Elizabeth
said,
May 12, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Me too. It was various guys from 5th grade on. Writing my name out as it would be if we were married, blah blah blah. Then in high school, it was poems. I even wrote a poem where the first letter of each lined spelled out EAH LOVES JFB. *snort*
Then after I sort went out with the guy had a crush on and then he stopped talking to me after I didn’t kiss him goodnight one time, the poems got a lot darker as I got depressed. After I went to college I want nothing to do with any of those journals. So embarrassing.
Sadly, both of those guys are married, and not to me! Their loss. I love my husband though :o)
Great post!
Rhi
said,
May 12, 2008 at 9:49 pm
“I hope our kids have his feet.” HA!
Now. I am totally going to ask Kerri Anne if I can read her journals next time we hang out.
Kayla
said,
May 12, 2008 at 10:00 pm
At least you kept those journals. All through high school I wrote and then promptly destroyed all my journals out of sheer embarrassment. I know they were totally ridiculous though.
Marriage-101
said,
May 12, 2008 at 10:11 pm
I had my own “Shadrach,” and I even blogged about him using his real name (before I realized the power of Google). A year or so later, his brother contacted me via my blog. He updated me on my obesession’s life (married with a son) and that was that. I doubt he would remember who I am, but I hope he at least found my shout out flattering and my teenage crush endearing.
Sadie
said,
May 12, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Oh my. I have destroyed many of mine, as well, unfortunately. I’m sure that I would be mortified by them now, I doubt they would have been humorous. I also doubt that I could read them aloud to my husband without being relentlessly teased.
the ambitious mrs
said,
May 12, 2008 at 11:41 pm
This totally cracks me up because I had a similar crush on Ryan Ivokovich (nice name! kinda like Shadrach!) I would ride my bike past his house to spy on him. And I would give his name the “golden kiss” I called it, every night. Which meant putting on Carmex and then kissing his name in the school directory. I was 11, okay!?
Wickedly Scarlett
said,
May 13, 2008 at 12:28 am
Oh my word, this is probably the most hilarious journal story I’ve ever heard! I don’t remember much about my pre-blogging journals except that I was always entranced by the idea of having a diary, but not so great about the execution. I would start out strong, write about my every thought and action for about a week and then forget to write for a couple of years before starting over again.
I was obsessed with the Secret Diary of Anne Frank for most of my childhood, so I think that’s where I first got the idea that journaling would be awesome. But since I wasn’t locked up in an attic all day, I usually found something more entertaining to do with my time. Like ride my bike in multiple loops around my crushes house. I was a stalker too, just in a different, probably more illegal way
Laurel
said,
May 13, 2008 at 3:09 pm
My junior high / high school journals are full of one crush or another, although I didn’t have a consistent crush over the years. When I reread them I want to be like, “Girl! You have nice friends! You have lots of hobbies! Why are you obsessing over this stupid boy!”
Stupid teenage self!
Operation Pink Herring
said,
May 13, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I didn’t pick up writing in my journal again until the end of my senior year of high school. I hardly ever go back and look at my old journals because they make my heart break for poor, teenage OPH.
sizzle
said,
May 13, 2008 at 4:19 pm
My teen journals are so sad. I have them all and they depress me.
HollowSquirrel
said,
May 13, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I didn’t have a journal and that’s a very good thing because I was boycrazy and LOVED (deeply and forever) a new boy each week. I stalked a couple, but I didn’t write about it. I just talked my friends to death about them.
I do, in terms of detailed embarrassment, have a collection of notes written between friends and me from high school and letters from college, sitting in a Rubbermaid bin in the guestroom closet. I’m just gathering the strength to read through them…perhaps when we have the neighborhood bonfire, which I can then stoke with the sordid tales.
Also? I totally know what I’m getting you next year for your bday.
Rachel
said,
May 13, 2008 at 5:10 pm
It seems kind of ironic given that I now blog, but I never really kept a journal as a kid. I tried, but I didn’t write very much, but I do recall bitching in them about people I didn’t like.
Jackie
said,
May 13, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I read my old journals a few years ago, when I found them at my parent’s house in a box marked, “Jackie’s Treasures.” It was painful to read about those crushes, those boys whom I would never speak to. Instead of their names, though, I developed complex symbols for each boy I was “following.” Think Prince when he was known by that funky symbol. Inside each of my symbols would be the letters of his name, or his initials, or his locker number. I was so paranoid that my sister or -gasp!- one of the boys would find the journals (which I carried with me at all times) that I couldn’t even write their names. Funny how I can still remember their names, and what the symbols meant.
Della
said,
May 14, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Thanks for the good wishes! It’s going well so far…we’re only on Day Two of course, but I’m staying positive.
La Turista
said,
May 19, 2008 at 6:00 pm
You have to check out the “Mortified” series of books, chock full of people’s childhood journal entries and love notes. They even do live performances around the country, where brave souls get up and read their “works.” It is so hilarious and, truly, mortifying at the same time.