Through the Past Dorkily: The Social Network

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.

Thursday, January 12, 1984

WAAF Top 5 at Five
1. Jump - Van Halen
2. Sister Christian - Night Ranger
3. Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes
4. 99 Red Balloons - Nena
5. Some Heads are Gonna Roll -  Judas Priest

I finally finished my Geog. research paper today! 9 pages!

I got an invitation from [redacted] for [redacted's] surprise party. Jeremy's gonna give me a ride there. It's on Saturday the 14th and I can't wait!

Driver's Ed is over! Yaaah! I can't believe it, but we're finally outta there! Yahoo!

Things are going pretty good for me right now. [Redacted] invited me to his party on Saturday but I had to say no because I'm going to [redacted's]. But at least I was invited! I think I'm starting to fit in quite nicely here!

Later, man.

- The Barbarian

Postscript: One reason I made friends so quickly after arriving in Kingston was I had to make up some requirements so I was in a few classes as a junior that primarily sophomores took, like History and Geography. As a result, I hung out with a lot of those kids as well as the ones in my grade. It took a few months, but I was getting invited to parties, which was huge. I didn't end up going to a lot of parties, but it was good to be considered. Ultimately, I wanted to get a girlfriend because I had never had one before. This school was my fourth in three years of high school, which made it difficult to make any friends, let alone female friends. I was just hoping we stuck around long enough for something good to happen.

Getting my driver's license was another huge event that I was approaching. As I mentioned in a previous post, things were pretty spread out here in southern NH, so you really needed a car to get around. I had a bike and used that to get to soccer practice the previous summer, but in the winter, it wasn't an option. My buddy Jeremy lived just down the road and started giving me rides to school in his Celica. Dude was a maniac. He would hit 100 mph sometimes on our way and if the parking lot was the least bit icy, he loved to do emergency brake slides and donuts. At first, it was kind of scary but after a while, it was like riding a roller coaster. Thankfully the town was big and there weren't a lot of cops around.