Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Through the Past Dorkily: Dazed and Confused

Editor's note: Through the Past Dorkily is a recurring feature that looks back at the embarrassingly dorky diary I kept as a 16-year-old in 1984.  

Monday, January 9, 1984
JIMMY PAGE'S BIRTHDAY

WAAF Top 5 at Five
1. 99 Red Balloons - Nena
2. Jump - Van Halen
3. Sister Christian - Night Ranger
4. Free Wheel Burning - Judas Priest
5. Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top

Today is Jimmy's birthday, not the 5th. WAAF played Side 2 from 'The Song Remains the Same' today. Cool!


'Free Wheel Burning' by the Priest is awesome! So is 'Hot for Teacher' by Van Halen. A couple of killers!!

[Redacted] told me if I just handed in my rough draft as it is, I'd get a B+. Not bad. A few changes and I got myself an A!

More tests tomorrow. Help!

Speaking of help, I've now got 4 days to write 20 pages of a Geog. report and then type it! Give me strength.

Two more days of Driver's Ed! Yaah!

Ceasar's lessons went well today. He did really well!

Later, man.

- The Barbarian

Postscript: I was pretty much exclusively a hard rock and metal fan at this point. Zeppelin, Priest, VH. I dug 'em all. Although I listened to a lot of FM radio, so I heard plenty of AOR fare like Springsteen, J. Geils Band and Boston and was starting to get into newer bands like U2 and Talking Heads. Still couldn't stand that Nena song, though.

I was a good student, for the most part. This was my junior year and I knew I was going to college, but I didn't know where yet. My dad was a draftsman at nuclear plants, so I just figured I'd get into some sort of engineering field. If you had told the 16-year-old me that I'd be an editor, he would have had a good laugh.

Papers took twice as long when I was in high school because I had to write them out longhand and then type them on my Underwood typewriter. Of course, you had to have plenty of Wite-Out correction fluid to dab over your mistakes. I can't even imagine how long it would take to type 20 pages that way. Not to mention the fact I couldn't type back then; on a lark, I smartly took a "Keyboarding" class senior year, which was about as valuable a high school class as I ever had. Got my senior prom date out of it, too.

Caesar was our black Lab puppy who we had enrolled in obedience lessons in Atkinson. I used to take him every Monday night. We had another dog, Sammy, a Spitz (aka American Eskimo) who we got when we lived in Canada.

 
 

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