A little comic relief. (Anyone reading my diary should not be offended.) [Stickers a product of Josh Schulman, a junior when I was a senior]
March 18, 1991 (Monday)
Mom bought a new car (well, it's new to us, it's an '88), a red Fiero. I'm not majorly impressed -- a car is a car, and the way she drives it I feel like I'm in the space shuttle taking off every time the light turns green.
March 20, 1991 (Wednesday)
English formal oral was today. I got a passage (the opener) from The Tempest and questions about The Scarlet Letter. I think I did OK. (Dr. Adkins told me I almost made her laugh {the teacher is supposed to be like pokerfaced so we won't know if we're saying the right or wrong thing} she didn't exactly say what at but I hope it was at my characterization of Miranda's attitude toward Prospero 'cause that was the only thing that was funny). So I spent most of the day talking to Allana, Linae, Tom and for shorter periods Aaron, Kim, Debbie, Mark, Andy and Amy. It was fun to get out of all day of school for only forty minutes of work and the rest of the day with reasonable friends and a Walkman.
March 31, 1991 (Sunday)
Pudge died a few days ago. (I was just told today.) Une après l'autre. Qu'est-ce qu'il me faut sentir?
April 6, 1991 (Saturday)
Thursday I called Marie's and her grandmother said "Marie doesn't live her anymore. She and Chris moved out." No more explanation, so when Marie gets around to calling for from wherever she is, I'll update.
Monday Mom made me open a checking account and pay the $200 deposit on a dorm room at USF. If I don't go there I'll get $150 of it back. Now I have $120 in my savings account and $80 in my checking account.
April 24, 1991 (Wednesday)
Today was a half-day anyway because of the accreditation team meeting with the teachers but I missed the bus because Mom is at Mike's so I had to walk to the bus stop and about a third of the way there I realized I had forgotten my lunch so I ran back for it but by the time I eventually got to the stop the bus was already gone. So I'm home. I didn't have any money that I could've bought lunch with and I didn't really want to depend on other people having money to lend.
Tomorrow is the Merit Finalist Breakfast thing. My French oral is probably next Friday. IB exams start the Monday after that. Two weeks of those, two last weeks of class, half a week of exams, and graduation. It's all ending so fast.
May 12, 1991 (Sunday)
Updates: The breakfast was fine if boring and my name was mentioned in the newspaper article.
French oral was fine. The new examiner was that lady from the Alliance Francaise and since me + Jeni
were the last people of the whole two days and we immediately followed John P., Juan, Jeff, Ryan, Dave M., +
Mark, we made good impressions. Cool! Plus, being last and not being inclined to study Jeni + I spent the
whole day writing in this little diary-for-five-year-olds Mom got me, which had bear stickers in it, so we
wrote and are still writing long strange sagas about the colorbears.
IB exams - oh my fucking God! This past week I had an exam every day and two on Tuesday and it was hell! But all of them are over except IB French tomorrow, the only one I felt even vaguely confident about. After that four days of no exams, three of which Jeni also has free so we'll play Trivial Pursuit or work on the colorbears.
The PRIDE awards ceremony which National Merit Finalists also got invited to was Thursday. I had been thinking about not going because John E. would be there and it would be annoying to watch him get the PRIDE award for writing (plus losing study time for history paper 3 and being bored while they honored 500 other people.) But I'm so glad I did go because Tony N. didn't show up so I got to sit next to Mike (G.!) and talk to him and have him write stuff in my portantbk.
Marie called. She + Chris are living in this apartment on 8th or 9th Ave. + 9th or 8th St., and serious hand to mouth. But Marie invited me to come visit next Friday, so I'm taking the public bus after I get out of SPJC at 12:30. She didn't say whether she meant to spend the night or not, but she's supposed to call back and I'll be sure to ask if she does and carry a nightgown + extra shirt in case if she doesn't [call back].
IB Senior Celebration not this Thursday, but next.
May 18, 1991 (Saturday)
Spent the night at Marie's. Their place, while not as bad as Ronnie + Linda in SC, is not great. She + Chris may be having problems. They're the asst. manager of the complex but I think all they get is a bonus for getting new tenants.
Marie introduced me to this guy Bob. He likes me a lot -- he bought me a rose a couple of hours after we met. He is quite nice, I guess, but he talks a lot and it got really boring to listen after an evening of it; in the morning I was (mentally) ike "Just let me read my book, OK?!" He gave me a lot of compliments. He's a Christian who's been celibate for two years and will be until he marries. (He got locked out of his {different} apt. complex for staying at Marie's too late, so he + I ended up sharing the mattress from their fold-out couch, on the floor because the supports were shaky, and I wouldn't have trusted any other guy I didn't want to fuck to do that. But it's weird that he saw me asleep -- such an intimate thing, you know?) Anyway, he's sweet, nice and I don't want to hurt him, but neither do I want to go out with him. I don't agree with like the tenets of his life and he does somewhat bore me. But I didn't realize that till today, a bit late to gently freeze him out. Shit, why did this have to happen? I guess I'll go out once or twice and then tell him I don't think it's working. He's too nice to wound but I don't see another option.
May 20, 1991 (Monday)
I talked to Mom about Bob and she said I really shouldn't got out with him. So when he called I few minutes ago I told him that I really couldn't because she didn't want me to. He took that quite calmly, only asked if we could still be friends and do things together (I said yes although I really can't imagine doing things with a guy that I've turned down even, as far as he knows, through no real fault of his own, the fact that I didn't really enjoy being with him was why I really turned him down in the first place). He said he'd written a poem for me, said that he wasn't going to consider it a closed issue, that it was always up to me. I think that (from my viewpoint) forlorn hope unnerved me more than anything else. Shit, I don't fucking know! I'm sitting her crying, so maybe I actually feel something for him or maybe it's just about the right time of month for my own PMS. I hate myself for doing this to him but I can't imagine having gone ahead out with him. He says he'll call me in a few days; God, what should I do?!
[Incidentally, I don't believe I heard from Bob again; Marie later told me that he'd met some girl and married her after less than two weeks.]
May 27, 1991 (Monday)
Memorial Day, no school. Yesterday I had Jeni and Caroline Brown (remember her from 10th grade?) over to watch Doctor Who. Although the Doctor was on for 6 hours, not much got watched. We signed yearbooks and read my comic strip collection adn it was really nice to get reacquainted. I'm glad I wanted Jeni to come over and I'm glad Jeni suggested Caroline.
Grandparents L. are getting here on Friday. I graduate not this Thursday but the next. I'm scared. I'm going to cry, j'en suis sure.
June 5, 1991 (Wednesday)
Well, that's it. No more high school except a very fabricated graduation ceremony. It's an emptiness. I don't do well without structure. Just as consolation, the last three stickers.
I hope that Sethe [from Toni Morrison's Beloved] was right, that nothing ever dies. Rememory.
June 6, 1991 (Thursday)
Well, I officially graduated. It's not as if it felt like a big deal. It started to drizzle several times during the ceremony but it was too late to move off the field into the auditorium so we soldiered on -- it wasn't really more than a mist and a lot of wind. I found out that I graduated "summa cum laude" -- me and Jaime were the only ones on the program with that symbol and not the one for Honor society next to our names. Coincidentally enough, I sat next to Jaime (and behind Aaron -- every time I turned I tried to memorize that gorgeous face!) Ivan, Christa and Kira made valedictory speeches (Ivan's was best because you could tell he was reading and because he was the shortest.) Mike G. trudged up through the arch like he does everywhere and it struck me as funny as it always does. I didn't cry because it didn't seem like an ending, it couldn't be with everyone so happy! Well, posterity, here's my senior year in 34 pages! Consult other scribblebooks for a more complete story!
I got my measles booster shot for college today.
