Below is my ninth-ever diary entry, from shortly before my fourteenth birthday. It's pretty short and straightforward. I can still picture everything I mention. The restaurant we went to dinner at was an inexpensive (but excellent) pizza place my family went to about once a week for 20 years until the owner decided he had had enough and just moved away without telling anyone (that was about 10 years ago--he must have checked in soon after because I don't remember anyone wondering if he was dead).
The Saturday I mention in the next paragraph was the 4th of October. My sister had recently started her freshman year at Texas A&M University, and her roommate and others were hard at work on one of the colossal bonfires they used to build before one collapsed in 1999 and killed 12 people. At the time of this entry, I thought it was a stupid tradition if only for the waste of trees and the waste of effort, and I was highly skeptical of the intense brainwashing my sister and other A&M students underwent as an essential part of upholding the school's many other ridiculous traditions. I mention none of that in this entry though, because, like I said, I was 13, and this was only my ninth diary entry ever, and I hadn't quite figured out that it's okay to write down these kinds of thoughts.
The entry:
October 6, 1997
I am so mad! My Dad [sic] told me a few days ago that we saw the MIR space station and we didn't! I wanted to see it all day and we had to go to dinner at the exact time it was going to be visible. But we got out of the car too late and what my Dad [sic] said was the station was moving N-S!
Went to visit my sister at college Saturday. That day was 1st CUT for bonfire. Just as we got there, people started getting back from the woods with their grods [A&M slang for muddy work clothes] on and orange pots [A&M slang for hardhats, color-coded by age group] on their heads. [My sister]'s roommate got right in the shower, so we went to the TV room to look at some photos. In about 5 minutes, three sweaty, dirty, blistered handed guys come running up to the TV to try and find the A&M/Colorado game. Soon, about 20 or 30 people came in and started moving furniture and sat in it, covered in mud!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment