Through the Past Dorkily: Leave It

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.

Wednesday, February 1, 1984

WAAF Top 5 at Five
1. Jump - Van Halen
2. The Heart of Rock 'n Roll - Huey Lewis and the News
3. Leave It - Yes
4. Sister Christian - Night Ranger
5. New Moon on Monday - Duran Duran

Weird day. We saw this dumb videotape on New Hampshire in NH Civics today. Then we painfully looked at the final in Geometry. And so the day went on. In French, I had my cheat notes under my notebook on my desk. [French teacher] wanted to look at my Deuxieme Livre and the notes fell out on my knee! I didn't even know where they were! Finally [classmate] told me where they were and I almost died on the spot! Stupid [teacher] didn't even notice! Man, talk about a close shave!

Prep for College sucks! We got tons of homework in there already!

Tomorrow we use first period to pick our subjects for next year.

- The Barbarian

Thursday, February 2, 1984

WAAF Top 5 at Five
1. Jump - Van Halen
2. Looks That Kill - Motley Crue
3. I Want a New Drug - Huey Lewis and the News
4. Middle of the Road - The Pretenders
5. Tied Up in Love - Ted Nugent

We picked our subjects today. I found out that I can't take Adv. Math in summer school because I didn't already have it. You can only make up subjects in summer school. So now I have to take Adv. Math next year. Also, there was a screw up with Type 1 and Keyboarding, so I just took Keyboarding and Media for another elective.

[Teacher] bitched at me again in NH Civics. [Another student] made a joke, I laughed and got yelled at. So who cares?

I stayed after school for a Junior Planning Committee meeting about the prom. We were trying to think of a theme song and narrowed it down to 5 songs. I still don't even know when the prom is! [Class president] walked out early because we were being noisy and rude. Big deal. Anyhoo, the meeting only lasted around 15 minutes and I had to wait for the friggin' late bus for 1.5 hours! I was talking to [cute girl I liked] for a while. Man, she's a babe! She has guitar lessons from [same instructor as me], too. She goes on Fridays. Wow.

Later.

- The Barbarian

Postscript: I was surprised to read that I had used cheat notes in French class there. Definitely don't remember doing that. Scandalous!

The math thing was a problem because of all the moving around we did my freshman year. At the high school I attended for three months in Canada, you only took subjects for a semester and I hadn't taken math yet before we moved. So when we got to Washington state, I got thrown in a remedial math class because I was too far behind in algebra. I never caught up and didn't have pre-calculus before going to college as a chemical engineering major; I was hopelessly lost in my calculus class freshman year at UNH. Just as well, I suppose.

I had also forgotten how big that Yes comeback album, 90215, was at this time. Back with Jon Anderson for the first time in a few years (but not Steve Howe), they had some big radio hits, including "Leave It." Nice video, guys. Yeesh.