Category Archives: The Diary Project
November 4, 2000
We skip forward quite a bit in the diary. (Well, to be honest, there’s one entry from September 3rd that consists of only a picture of I drew of me being excited that “Gundam Wing” wasn’t canceled. We’ll get to that abomination once I can use a scanner.)
Like any TV show with a significant time jump, it’s important to note where we left off. In seventh grade, I was your typical, semi-trendy, stuck-in-the-middle girl. I walked that line between being too cool for the true freaks/geeks, and too lame for the popular kids. There were a lot of us in the middle, and we existed in large, one-gendered groups. The extremely popular and unpopular kids were the first to make opposite-sex friends, which is understandable, since there are only so many other incredibly attractive/hopelessly weird kids per grade. However, if you existed somewhere outside that line, you were doomed to two more years of all-girl lunch tables, group crushes, and unnecessary trips to the bathroom to put on lip gloss/apply body glitter.
Upon entering eighth grade, I decided to start dressing more, um, alternative. Yes, I was a wanna-be Goth crossed with a nerd who loved science fiction and chandelier earrings. This made for some interesting fashion choices, but hey, back then Avril Lavigne didn’t have a clothing line, so I had to fend for myself.
My theory was that I would rather fit in somewhere than sort of float in the sea of other brown-haired girls with glasses who wore cargo pants and butterfly tees.
It didn’t really work out.
(One of my middle school fashion icons was Caitie from the short-lived Disney show “In a Heartbeat.” If you can bear to sit through three minutes of bad editing and Michelle Branch, then watch the video to see how I dressed back in the day. Also: this is just the sort of horrible fan tribute I would have made if we had this kind of technology back in the early 2000s. Let’s all be grateful that YouTube wasn’t invented yet.)
Most of my friends didn’t get it when I came to class on the first day in an all-black ensemble. Looking back, it wasn’t particularly shocking or inappropriate, just incredibly hot for Michigan in August. However, it did change my peer group entirely. I still remained close with my bff Emily, but most of my peripheral friends drifted away. I did maintain my often volatile and ridiculous relationship with my frenemy Stefanie. (Hi Stef! If you’re reading this, I hope you have equally awkward things written about me somewhere.)
11/4/00
Stef is trying to hook me up with her friend, Joe. He said he wanted to meet me after seeing my drawing of Relena on a note she gave him. But how do I know that she isn’t lying to me. She’s lied before.
Also, I’m not sure who I like anymore. I still think Ryan is hot – but I also kinda ❤ David B. That sorta bugs me, but I don’t know either one of them all that much so I’m still just kinda confused about the whole thing. cya!!!
Again, we have a really short entry that basically says nothing. We won’t start seeing consistent entries until around February or March 2001, but the hilarity will remain, consecutive or not.
Relena is (shocking reveal ahead!) a character from “Gundam Wing.” I had some truly horrific anime drawings back then. I’ll scan them someday, and we can laugh and cringe at my artistic endeavors. I also MIGHT have some drawings and early drafts of my very first “Gundam Wing” self-insert fanfiction featuring me and bff Emily as Mary Sues.
We are also entering into a time of great romantic confusion. Get excited about that! My former flame, Ryan, is soon to be traded off for the ever-attractive, ever-douchey, ever-rides-his-tractor-to-school David B. I have no idea where he is now, or if he’s still as attractive as my eighth grade self imagined.
The story of my love for David B. is best savored over the rest of the diary. I appear to be quite the expert on the subject, as it will later fill most of the pages. There are particularly fantastic incidents where I mull over whether a brief interaction means he is hopelessly in love with me.
I actually do remember the story of how we met. It’s not that different from every other story involving my inherent attraction to jerkasses. I’m pretty sure every dude I’ve ever wanted to bang has won my heart by being a complete tool within minutes of our first meeting. I should really figure out the psychological implications of the fact that a guy has to be a douche bag to attract my attention, but I prefer to blame my childhood crushes on fictional bad boys instead.
We had some sort of class poetry assignment, and being the obnoxious wanna-be writer I was, I decided to show everyone up by writing a deep and meaningful poem about how no one understood my tortured heart. After I read my poem aloud, I was supposed to receive feedback in the form of notes from each person in the class. I kept getting tiny little bits of paper with one word on them. Words like “it” and “was” and “lame” kept appearing on tiny, dirty, wrinkled pieces of paper. I looked around to see the culprit, and that’s when David B. and I locked eyes. He winked and gave me one of those confident half-smiles. That was all it took. He had already taken his place as the Rhett Butler to my Scarlett O’Hara.
(Oh, and Joe, the other guy mentioned in this entry? I’m pretty sure he and Stefanie ended up dating. So yeah.)
April 29, 2000
We begin this tale in late seventh grade, approximately a day or so before my best friend Emily’s birthday. I remember going to her sleepover party and coming home to write this entry. My nine-year-old cousin Jenny bought me this diary, which if I remember correctly, was of the Lisa Frank vocation. It likely had some douchey magenta dolphins swimming in a pastel blue and purple sea. Shortly after writing this entry, I ripped off the cover and stuck the bound pages underneath my mattress. The diary lived there until its ultimate retirement to a box in my closet during the Great Room Clean-Out of 10th grade. (Which is, unfortunately, the year I decided to give away all my Sweet Valley High and Babysitter’s Club books. I thought I was too mature for that shit. I’d kill for those now, but more on my childhood book collection quest later.)
Lisa Frank was THE stationery to have for preteen girls in the 90s. By the time I hit 13, I was so over it.
This entry is pretty lame, but I promised to include everything, so here we go. All spelling and grammar will be left as is, so if incorrect punctuation and odd sentence structure seriously bother you, you may want to look elsewhere for your daily dose of awkward.
I’m not really sure why I’m writing in this. Jenny got it for me, so I guess it’s more like an obligation to write.
My name is Diane. I’m 13 years old. I have medium-length light brown hair (which I hate, I wish it was longer and darker)
I have gray-blue-green eyes. I have a pet guinea pig. My favorite movie is Gone With the Wind, and my favorite book is the same.
My absolute favorite T.V. show is Gundam Wing (and I am a little obsessed)!
I used to like this guy but I don’t really like him anymore. bye.
This entry begins with some basic facts. Two of which are still true: (1) I still like Gone With the Wind and (2) I used to like this guy but I don’t really like him anymore.
To really compare then and now, I think we’re in need of some visuals. I solemnly swear to post more pictures, but the majority of these beauties are at my parents’ house in Michigan. For now, you’ll have to be content with this:
Here I am on my 13th birthday. This was my favorite sweatshirt. Ignore the grim background, my mom swore those hideous curtains kept the February drafts out.
And here’s what I look like now — nine years later!
I try to channel Christina Hendricks from "Mad Men" whenever possible. Bitch is fierce!
So, just to recap, let’s compare some more stats from then and now:
Diane, circa 2000
- School: about to start eighth grade at large suburban middle school outside of Ann Arbor, MI
- Friends: Emily, a tall, gangly blonde who shared my love of stupid adventures, urban fantasy novels and anime. We became best friends in sixth grade, the day we got hopelessly lost from our tour group during a class trip to Toronto, Canada. And let’s not forget Stefanie, my favorite frenemy. (More on her later!)
- Lives With: Family of four. My dad was a circulation manager for a Detroit newspaper, my mom worked for a company that made pharmaceutical parts. I fought constantly with my sister, Vivian, then age 11. She has a pretty hilarious childhood diary as well!
- Loves: Ryan. Oh, Ryan! You’ll get the full saga in excerpts from my sixth grade diary. He was the typical class clown/jackass with a bowl haircut and dimples. I loved him the day he started directing his sarcastic comments in my general direction.
Diane, circa 2009
- School: Journalism grad student at a university in Central Illinois
- Friends: Diedra, my college roommate of three years; Sara, my long-distance bff from the old hometown; Kevin, my former neighbor who serves as my own personal Barney Stinson; Noel, my former housemate who is currently teaching English in Turkey; Laura, my oldest friend who is interning at newspaper in New Jersey.
- Lives With: Michelle, another student in my grad program, originally from Indiana. We’ve bonded over our love for sandwiches, feminism and Jason Segel.
- Loves: Currently, none! I was dating someone before I came to Illinois, but now I spend my time crushing on unavailable guys in my program and the hot med student who parks his car across from mine.
Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, the fun can begin! Just wait until we get to charts I made chronicling how often I saw my crush and how much we talked. IT’S GOING TO BE EPIC.
Hilarious and Horrible
Hi there.
My name is Diane, and I’ll be guiding you through the hilarious, horrible, awkward, cringe-worthy world that was my 13-year-old brain. I’ll be posting the contents of my eighth grade diary, as well as excerpts from other journals, blogs and notes from my teenage years.
I’ve been keeping a diary in some form since third grade. Inspired by Harriet the Spy, I started my very first “private notebook” at the age of nine. It mostly contained mundane observations about what my neighbors were doing, how much smarter I was than all the other kids and why my younger sister annoyed me. I later moved to various writer’s journals, paper notebooks and microsoft word documents before discovering the internet. Sadly, the contents of my life between ninth and eleventh grade has been lost somewhere online after teenopendiary.com shut down, but I do retain some of the worst poetry and prose from my high school years. My last diary is from the first day of 12th grade to the last day of my freshman year of college.
“Everything is hilarious and horrible” describes not only the contents of my diary, but the way my life is going. I’m in my first weeks of grad school, and being seven hours from my friends and family can be heart-wrenching at times. I graduated last May, and all my friends have (literally) scattered across the globe. While I’m excited about the opportunity I’ve been given, I’m desperately missing the people and places I’ve left behind.
Laughing at myself is what keeps me going. Throughout college, I blogged about my small scale adventures for an online campus weekly. However, a new chapter in my life means a new subject. I’m eager to embarrass the shit out of myself as I bring you the tales of woe written by a girl who actually grew out her hair so she could look more like Princess Leia.
I promise to always be honest here. No matter how awkward, I’ll always share.
I might spare you the pages and pages of anime analysis, though. No one needs to hear that.
Dianerific 