Through the Past Dorkily: Girl Gone Bad

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.

Sunday, September 2, 1984

Song of the day: Slide It In - Whitesnake

I got up at 2:30.  Didn't do much of anything today.

- The Barbarian

Monday, September 3, 1984

Song of the day: Pride (In the Name of Love) - U2

I got up. I went to work at 12. Worked all day. Came home at 10.

- The Barbarian

Tuesday, September 4, 1984

Song of the day: Mystery - Dio

Top 5 at Five
1. Pride (In the Name of Love) - U2
2. On the Dark Side - John Cafferty and Beaver Brown
3. New Girl Now - Honeymoon Suite
4. Midnight Maniac - Krokus
5. Tears - John Waite

Strange day. I got up at 11:30. All I did was bum around the house all day. I didn't go outside until 11 p.m. when I took the dog out.

Phone call of the day: [Cute girl I like] called me up. She asked me if I wanted to go to the second Summer Jam (Stompers, Beaver Brown) on Saturday with her. Unfortunately, I had to say no because I'm working Friday night crew. She also said she was going to see Rush on Oct. 2. She said she'd give me and [drummer dude] a ride to the show if we wanted. I said I'd talk to him.

She kept asking me if I was mad at her for not keeping in touch. She said she was real busy with relatives and stuff. I said no. She sounded pretty interested.  

Hmm. Double hmm.

- The Barbarian

Wednesday, September 5, 1984

Song of the day: All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

Weird day. I got up at 8 and took Mom to work. [Buddy] and Jeremy came by and we rode around in [buddy's] car. When I got back, Sammy pissed on my bed! Right thru the covers! Damn dog!

I went to work at 3. I didn't get out till 11:10.

- The Barbarian

Thursday, September 6, 1984

Song of the day: Stand Up - Coney Hatch

First day of school. [Buddy] picked me up at 7. At school we stood around for a while in the freezin gair and then went in the gym, then to our homerooms. I'm in 27, the quiet study hall. I copied my schedule down wrong and went to the wrong classes 5th and 6th period, but I straightened it out.

[A buddy of mine] grew a mustache. [Girl I dated] bleached the front of her hair.

This year should be pretty good.

We played the Sanborn alumni and lost, 5-1.

I got my check and only got $58. [Store manager's] gonna run my check thru the computer tomorrow.

- The (back to school) Barbarian

Friday, September 7, 1984

Song of the day: Girl Gone Bad - Van Halen

School went pretty good today. In Field Biology, me and [another guy] decided to get sea horses for pets. I have some homework in Adv Math and Journalism. Journalism is cool. I became one of the readers who check stories for errors, etc. I have to write a story this weekend.

Hot new babe dept.: There's this girl who sits with us in 1st period free. I think her name is [redacted] (not spelled that way.  That's what I think people have called her). What a babe!

Another babe is in my Journalism class. I think her name is [redacted]. Nice bod.

We got a different jukebox. It sucks. It's even worse than last year's one. It's got disco songs, country songs and assorted garbage. Great. Some chick put on some queer disco song. I almost died.

After school, me and [a buddy] drove around for awhile. Practice was 3 hours long. I got home just past 6. At 9, I went to work. I found out that [some dude] quit. Too bad. Crew sucked! Too much work. As it turned out, I was up for 25 hours straight! Sheesh!

Postscript: Not sure why we started school so late this year. I forgot about getting that call from the girl I'd been pursuing all summer. I wasn't a fan of the Stompers or Beaver Brown, anyway.

Free periods were pretty fun. We hung out in the cafeteria, could buy candy and junk from the little store there, and could crank tunes on the jukebox. I remember, despite the "queer disco," playing a lot of U2 and Van Halen on that thing. Somebody figured out how to screw with the volume and really blast it, and then they turned it off for a while, I think.

Journalism class! At this point, I had no clue that journalism would be my chosen profession. It was just something that looked interesting and not too difficult. We didn't have a school paper, but our class had a page in the local newspaper that we contributed stories to, so that was cool.