I have something interesting that helps me recall some events from December 1986. And even more so, it takes a peek inside my head during this time period. And what’s more, it’s all fake. But not really. The truth is that I somewhat cheated on my 7th period English assignment from Mrs. Walters, where we were charged with writing a daily journal for almost a month (which included our Christmas break). I didn’t fill this thing in daily at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wrote most of it in study hall after I had returned to school following the holidays.
But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t accurate for the most part. In fact when I resumed keeping a journal in 1988, referring to the ‘fake journal,’ entries, I wrote “I was surprised glancing over them, some of the occurrences which really too place.” On the cover of the journal, I labeled it JOURNAL Dec. 10, 1986 – Jan 5, 1987 and then added ‘Bullshit entries for a grade’.
In order to fill each page with two days worth of pontification, I often mentioned an event that took place and then commented my opinion of that event. For instance, for the first entry on December 10, I mentioned going to a ‘science show demonstration’ with school, but noted that it was obviously not a true representation of the type of work that a scientist does. Boring stuff like that.
But what’s good about this journal is that even though I wrote it after the fact, it only covered a month’s worth of activity and gave insight into my interests, thoughts, and some of the goings-on that were going on during this time period. So bypassing all of the commentary and tedium, I was able to glean some useful and interesting information about my life as a 15-year old.
For starters, I complained a lot about my paper route – how I often put off delivering the papers until it had become too dark and cold out – except for weekends, which had just seen a switch from Saturday afternoon delivery to Saturday morning before 8am. At the time, my ideal future career was to become a lawyer. And I was thoroughly obsessed with movies and Super 8 film and had in fact set up a ‘screening room’ in my bedroom where I actually would show Super 8 films to friends and family. This interest had blossomed from my association with George Willeman and Jim Harwood, two film students at Wright State who had joined our Sons of the Desert tent in Springfield. George and I had had some lively discussions at the meetings out in Carl Ahlm’s kitchen, while others were watching the films. My focus quickly became on seeing all of the Alfred Hitchcock films. I had been a fan of his – in a small way – for six years or so, but now I finally developed the desire to actually watch so many of his film of which I was only familiar of the title.
Jim had me over to his place on December 14, where I spent the night and we watched films from his Super 8 collection. I noted in the journal that we had watched the rare (and racial) Warner Bros. cartoon Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs. He also sold me a few of the films from his collection at some rock bottom prices, and loaned me some Blackhawk videos of the Our Gang for me to copy.
As I was looking forward to Christmas break (and dreading the science project that I had to start over break, which had something to do with plants), I went over to Missy Fodor’s house on Wednesday, December 17 to help make a Mexican dessert for our Spanish glass. This quickly degenerated into a flour and powdered sugar fight, causing half of the cookies to spill on the floor. Missy decided to throw these cookies away, although my preference was to go ahead and serve them.
The next day, I got my braces off. I had worn them since 7th grade (top teeth first, then the bottom) after having worn a retainer since 5th grade. Dr. Morrow took a now picture to go with the hideous then picture when I first started going to see him. Once again, I was charged with wearing a retainer and had two of my top front teeth banded together in the back. I didn’t have this band removed until 1999, long after it had already broken free from one of the teeth.
Me and the new pearly whites
TMI?
Christmas break finally came on Friday, December 19. I was looking forward to the break from school, but dreaded the paper route in the winter. At that point, I hated it and was ready to give it up – but didn’t officially sell it off until September the following year. On that first night of break, I went to watch volleyball with Mom and out to Marion’s pizza with the team. Mom was trying to talk me into joining the team.
Oddly, there was no mention of the Gem City Classics Christmas party, but there was some rambling about the CompuColor party on Saturday the 20th. This was my Dad’s company’s get-together and I complained that there was no one my age there, there was only one table, there was no soda pop, and they only had cold cuts. Apparently I stood there for nearly three hours bored out of my skull.
After we got home from the party Mom and Dad went out and left me to babysit Denise. While I was trying to enjoy watching Hitchcock’s Topaz, Denise came out to tell me that she had thrown up all over her room, which utterly disgusted me. I told her to go back to bed.
The flu that she had gotten would dramatically effect the course of the Christmas events that were to transpire.
Using the journal to help recall the events, I will chronicle Christmas 1986 in the next posting…
Leave a Reply