Open When 16

Past notes to future me.

[openwhen16]

Crazy Daisies

Undated, c. 1996

Crazy daisies

Are so much fun to eat

They ate em in the sixties

Crazy daisies are so sweet

You can eat em with a fork

You can eat em with a spoon

They’ll take you to the dentist

They’ll take you to the moon

Dance, little crazy daisy

Don’t be all late and lazy

Dance, crazy daisy, dance!

Yeah!

[openwhen16]

Church camp

August 11, 1996

Where did we leave off? Camp? Here’s the 411:

Reagen ended up coming anyway. She was in a cabin with Natalee and Emily so she moved in with Alisha and I. It was fun, but when her mom came to pick her up I think she was trying to ignore me. Josh W. and Weston C. (and the rest of Cabin 2) got in trouble for being out past 2:00 AM and their punishment was supposed to be to wash each other’s feet. Someone else washed their feet, but they were in the middle of the basketball court. It was pretty humiliating (got pictures).

[openwhen16]

I have been betrayed

May 1996

I am tired, I’m hungry, I have been betrayed, called a skank, and left alone for a whole week and I DON’T EVEN KNOW THE DAMN DATE.

Brian broke up with my best friend saying he “wouldn’t go out with anyone for a while.” I should have known that the second she asked him out he would hesitate in saying no. He changed his story to it was “his life” and “he makes all the decisions.” Whatever. Every time I bring up Alisha he sticks his nose up. When I tell him I don’t like the way he treats her, he repeats it’s his life and he makes all the decisions. What a bastard. To hell with it! Brian can have Jennifer, the fucking queen of food in her braces!

And I just heard from Ely that Adam calls me a skank all the time.

[openwhen16]

Cool story.

c. 1996

Hi! What’s ↑??? Not much here! Just sittin in Reading.

I’m so glad I got in Girl Scouts! Are you glad I got in??

When I called Janet, I said “Hi! Hello!” She said “Hello!” I said “This is Libby W. One of Natalie H.’s friends.” I said “I’m calling to see if I can join Girl Scouts!” She said “Oh! Why that would be just wonderful. Why we’d love to have you!” I said “Well, thanks, bye!”

p.s. I’m so HAPPY

WBS

Seeya at lunch!

LYLAS

Libby

[openwhen16]

What a song

You look tired are you okay.

I don’t really feel tired at all?

So are you going to the movies tonight. Is Alisha going with you.

I don’t know yet. I’ll ask her but I’m supposed to go at six. Maybe I’ll go at five.

Is Reagen going with you?

I don’t know yet. Anyway last night Julai started singing this song she made up about some kid who needed a new appendix, she was calling him Billy Joe. In the third verse, he dies and my grandma jumps up and leaves the room crying. My grandpa told us later that her little brother Billy Joe died as a baby but we didn’t even know.

Well that’s wierd. Is it the grandma that lives over on Benton? Never mind it isn’t. Your sister thinks of really nice songs to sing, a boy needing an appendix! What a song.

[openwhen16]

13 Ceramic Dogs

(A list of porcelain items on my bedroom shelf)

c. 1994

13 ceramic dogs

1 white earring holder unicorn

2 unicorns under rainbows

1 standing woman

1 penguin

1 small log (with 3 birds on it)

1 elephant

1 small carrot

1 small lettuce

1 carved whale shell

1 unicorn on mirrored glass plate

1 bucking unicorn

1 music box w/2 doves

1 large blue unicorn bust

1 blue glass goose

2 flowers in pots

1 small basket of flowers

1 white earring holder elephant

2 small white doves

1 small white angel

1 small pink rose + mirror base (not attached)

1 small grey seal on rock

4 flowered ceramic picture frames

[openwhen16]

Worm

August 31, 1992

Today was a good day. I got all my homework finished. I brought a horned worm today. I found it in my yard. I let it crawl on the ground at recess. Everybody liked it.

[openwhen16]

Male Seeking Male

February 9, 1999

A few days ago I read Joe’s email and in it was a reply to a classified ad he wrote to some girl who said she was a stripper. He wrote back “I can tame you” and “we can get it on.” So I changed his ad to Male Seeking Male and I don’t answer his emails anymore.

[openwhen16]

August 28, 1999

This is nuts. It seems that Joe likes me again. He popped this nice little bit on me right before Town & Country Days. He left a note on my car and asked me to meet him downtown at the Bingo stand. I didn’t meet him but I walked by later looking hot as hell.

[openwhen16]

TBA

January 14, 1998

“What is your current life path?

What is life’s meaning?

What are those aspects of human life which give it meaning?

How do you make moral decisions?

How should a person live?”

These are the questions we were supposed to answer for Literature today. I am sixteen years old. I DON’T KNOW the meaning of life! How dare anyone ask me such personal questions? Like I’d tell Mrs. Barton even if I did know the answers. For the ‘meaning of life’ question, I wrote “TBA,” but now I’m thinking I should just look up “life” in the dictionary and prattle off whatever they say.

I don’t know why this pisses me off as much as it does. I guess it’s because this woman has the audacity to teach the same humdrum shit every year, then as us what we think our lives mean without even telling us what she thought hers meant. No encouragement whatsoever, just write down on loose-leaf college-ruled paper what you think your life means and hand it in by Thursday.

She has got to be kidding me.

[openwhen16]

YOSHI

September 27, 1992

Today was OK. My grandpa got a Nintendo. Wow! He even got the game Yoshi It is fun. I hope I get to go to my grandpa’s house today. I have singing lessons today. YOSHIIIIII!!!!

[openwhen16]

So I bit him.

January 1998

Saturday night I told Mommy I was going to the late show with Caty. She said i had to be home by midnight. Instead I went to Mel’s and hung out with a hell of a lot of people I don’t know. About 20 minutes after I got there, Joe started getting bitchy. He would cross his arms and look away when I talked to him. So I bit him. Then he got madder. So I sat somewhere else. When I came back, he was angry because I had gone away in the first place! It was soooo frustrating. I wanted to hit him so hard. I almost bit him again! So I waited that mood out, he lightened up a little until I called him Joey, which he claims to hate. This time, steam almost came out of his ears. So I waited through another bitchy mood, then he took me home. What a trip.

I asked him if he was mad. I played his game for a while, even said I was sorry (HA!) for calling him Joey, when I really thought he was just being a mama’s boy. So then, after a little “oh-pity-poor-me” sniffling, I just kicked his ass. I told him everything I have ever had to put up with where he was concerned, the way he always changed the subject when I was talking, how he always talked about missing his ex-girlfriend, how he was just mean and stupid in general.

At the four-way stop in town he changed his tune. He apologized and agreed he’d been a shitty boyfriend, everything was his fault, that he had taken it all out on me that night.

Then he started to say “I don’t want you to be mad at me” and I replied that he should have thought of that before he shit all over me. Then we just sort of went back and forth like that for about 45 minutes until I finally just got out of the car. He asked if he could come see me at work or call me, and I told him I didn’t know and he drove off.

Sunday night, he didn’t come in and I didn’t give a shit. Caty and I went to my house after she got off work and Jayson and Brogan went to Joe’s. At about 12:00, all of them showed up to pick up Caty and they ended up hanging out for an hour. Joe was with them, he sat in the corner and pouted, but on the whole he was nice. Then he left with the rest of them.

He was supposed to move on the 7th but the roads were frozen so now they aren’t leaving until sometime later this week. We had school on Thursday, but it was called off Friday and Monday. He asks me what I want, and I don’t know what to say. How do you tell your boyfriend you want him to move away?

I want him to be gone and moved away so I can just go to work and miss the way he cuts tomatoes.

[openwhen16]

New boy

November 25, 1992

Today we got a new student. He is nice. He knows a lot about Social Studies. He lives where my aunt lives, which is Alabama. Only my aunt lives in an apartment on Spinnakker Ridge. I know because I spent my summer at her house. 

November 28, 1992

Today I saw my mom’s Christmas list. I didn’t mean to. The new boy is not so nice anymore. He thinks he’s sooooooo hot!

[openwhen16]

House of the Psychotic Women

April 1, 1997

28 days until my birthday.

A man, a woman, and a boy about N.’s age were walking around the neighbor’s house. I enjoyed the quiet of Geneva living there, but I said a quick prayer that the kid had a brother who was taller than me with long hair and played drums or guitar and likes computers and will also like me.

Alison G. came over last night and brought “Stealing Beauty” with Liv Tyler. It was pretty good, filmed in Italy at this artsy home where everyone ran around nude. It was about her mother (who was dead), her father who she wasn’t sure of but finds in the end, but mostly it was about her quest to find someone to give her virginity to.

Next, we watched “House of the Psychotic Women,” some old horror movie. A guy comes to work at this house with 3 sisters. One’s promiscuous, one’s very refined and has a fake arm, and one’s husband left her for a blond, blue-eyed girl. He fucked the first two but somebody’s killing everyone in town and cutting their eyes out. It turns out to be the doctor, who hypnotizes the crippled sister into getting up and killing people for their eyes, which he takes to his basement where his dead daughter is. He sticks the eyeballs in her sockets, because she was like killed by a nurse during an eye surgery, like a freak accident. The nurse was blonde and blue-eyed! Only the refined sister with the fake arm lived. The worker guy was killed by the cops.

Brian is coming tomorrow and we are walking to Jennifer’s so he can see Teresa. I guess I’ll hug her when I see her. Bitch.

[openwhen16]

A Story About Kelly

undated, c. 1998

This is a good story about a stupid girl. Kelly is the stupid girl. She lives in Eldorado, Illinois. Not many girls like her, but all of the boys like her. I wonder whyyyyy?

Well, anyway, Kelly was a very good little girl. She did all her homework on time and made every game in time to cheer for the boys. Still, she had some very serious enemies. One of them was a girl named LaQuesha. Queen LaQuesha got angrier every day because Kelly was so perfect and snotty. She decided to put an end to Kelly’s evil rein over the high school.

One day, Kelly was on her way home from school when she heard a noise She pretended not to notice and kept walking. This was not smart of her, but do not expect anything else. Little did she know that Queen LaQuesha was hiding in the bushes with some of her girlfriends and some submachine guns. As Kelly strolled past, humming “Unchained Melody,” LaQuesha and her friends jumped out of the bushes and began to fire on her. She ran as far as her shoes could take her, and even though they were very sturdy steel-toed cheerleading sneakers, they could not carry her away from the rapid gunfire. She fell to the ground, bleeding and writhing in mortal agony when Queen LaQuesha scooped out her eyes with a warm spoon.

The moral of this story is very simple: you will die if you are a cheerleader because of the shoes they make you wear. If someone tries to hunt you down, and believe me, someone will, you will not be able to run away fast enough. No more pep rallies, no more ball games, no more cheerleaders. Truly, a perfect Kelly-less world.

[openwhen16]

Don’t spray it

Undated, c. 1996

Brian,

We all keep secrets from one another. That’s our problem and you don’ t have to worry about telling things I say because I’m not going to say them again. Everybody needs to realize that I am sick and tired of saying and hearing things about everyone and I will tell if that’s what I have to do. Don’t be mad, but I think the only reason you’re mad is because you were caught. You don’t say it, I don’t spray it!

Jona

Dear Jona,

I’m all for open for the thing your doing but how would you like it if I told Jen Jess Brooke and espessially Reagon what you say about them. Not that I’m going to But there are some things that need to be kept secrets isn’t that what friends are for?

Your friend,

Brian

p.s. I’m not mad about what you told Jen I just want to tell you this.

p.p.s. I’ve got to talk to you.

[openwhen16]

Eugene is my friend

Undated, c. 1996

Eugene is my friend

Until the end

Eugene is my pal

His sister’s name is Sal

Don’t leave me Eugene!

Or I’ll have to scream

If you leave, I’ll flip my lid

Don’t disappear like Jackey did

I chased him away

Just so you could stay

If you leave I’ll cry

I’m too young to die