Mortified

Last weekend, ET, Mr, and I went to the SF premiere of Mortified. Started in Los Angeles (suspect, I know) Mortified asks actors and non-actors to get up on stage and read from their teenage journals, letters, or schoolwork. It was funny, but with a certain precious self-consciousness that haunts my generation. That sense that we once were nerds and now we are cool when the truth is: not everyone was a nerd and those of us who were, many of us are still nerds.

That said, I was an avid journaler for many years starting in my late teens and throughout my 20s so after the performance I felt compelled to pull out my journals. Maybe I would audition! Maybe I would stand on stage and bear my soul to strangers! Maybe not. Thankfully most of my journals fell outside of my teen years, however I thought I would share this entry from my first week in college. Current comments are in green italics. Punctuation and capitalization were preserved as originally written. The names of the innocent have not been changed to protect them. Read on, if you dare:

i'm sick and i'm not too happy. i'm trying to keep busy, but i feel like total shit. i don't like being sick away from home.

i've seen two really good movies--Punchline (yes, the Tom Hanks and Sally Field movie) and Tom Waits' Big Time. i really enjoyed Big Time. i'd never really heard tom waits music very much, but the movie was pretty bitchin'.

i went to kla (campus radio station) with mark, andy & yas yesterday. it was pretty cool. oh my god--mark & yasmin are together!! (actually underlined three times) wierd. seriously. i'm really freakin' over that. mark with a girlfriend is really a strange concept.

i really like her. i'm glad because michelle irked me to no end. i don't want this to seem like i'm just trying to get back at michelle. i don't like her anyway. even if mark & yas weren't together i'm just glad mark was closing his dealings with her. yasmin is wonderful.

It was the post-Valley girl era and I was living in Los Angeles (suspect, I know), but I am not sure what I had against end a word in "ing." I realize that this entry hardly qualifies as mortifying, and may be funny only to people who knew methen and still know me now (what was my obsession with Tom Hanks about, Ray?). But it seems embarassing to me. At least a little.  OK, here's the next one:

i feel a little better. i went to see moonstruck (good--my family exactly??) on thursday with andy, mark & yas. on friday marla and i went to hollywood and saw imagine (rad movie). we went to a keen cafe called mel n' roses and i had real food (mmm, mmm, rieber hall just can't be beat). when i got home (2 or 2:30) sheila & i stayed up and talked for about an hour. it was nice.

i went to neelam's to watch snl at about 11:15. her jerk neighbor ate all my wheat thins (!!!) tom hanks was rad. mr. short-term memory is a classic. we watched some horror movie for  while. she's not for joe (yes, you). she's great, but not as wonderful for him as i thought.

i got home about 2:15 and jay called at 2:30. he went on about his non-relationship with shannon (I wouldn't be surprised to find out these two are married now). anyway we decided we were too awake to go back to bed so we invited him over to do laundry. so was born the night of exploding microwaves and laudry.

it was a warm, clear night. jay swore in front of us for the first time. it was really funny.

Well, that's as close to Mortified as I am going to get. As I entered my 20s my journals actually got mortifying, so much so that I can't read them without crawling out of my skin. At the same time, I can't seem to dispose of them quite yet (a dozen from the ages of 25 to 30 alone), but whether they need to see the light of day ever again is doubtful.

Comments

[rayna]

I will add that I DID find a letter recently which was written by Big Sister around the time of quoted journal entries, noting how very cool the new indoor mall in our hometown was and also how much she loved Tom Hanks. These statements were made without any hint of sarcasm, which is kind of cute, actually. sigh.

[Bonnie]

Ah come on that's not so bad. Your journals could have revealed a love of Hall & Oats which is the contents of a good friend's journal from her clearly mispent youth. It seems you just really, really liked Tom Hanks and cool indoor malls (who doesn't!). It all sounds very sweet.

And my NSS Cardi is coming along but something seems off. It is my first raglan and top down knit so it isn't like I even know what it is going on. So I keep knitting away. I am still on the top portion increasing to the sleeve separation point. I hope the needles I ordered arrive in time!

[Tany]

Mr. Short Term Memory IS a classic.

Package in the mail to you by next Monday or Tuesday.

My old journals are written in a code that even I can't decipher. But I think they all revolve around David Bowie, The Empire Strikes Back, and how I wanted to get into Harrison Ford's pants.

The times, they change.

[ET]

Those entries are mortifying only in their inaneness -- which of course is not a criticism. Perhaps if you sang them and did sign language at the same time?

[andrea]

The frequent use of the word "rad" takes me right back, Nic! Eighteen years ago I started college--it seems like it was yesterday, huh?