Cringing my head off at this insight into my own youth...

[solidgoldbrass]

In the process of having a right old clear-out, have uncovered a box of 'conversations' ie note-passing that I used to do with friends at school in my teens; we would basically pass a sheet of file paper back and forth between us in particularly boring lessons and discuss... stuff.
What an unbelievable little tick I was! If not whining or sulking, I was slagging off my mates' boyfriends and then complaining no one liked me. Mind you, the next time I start wishing I could be Young Again I will remember those scribbles and be very glad that I am not, in fact, 15 any more. Has anyone else got lurking horrors like this, old diaries or whatever?

My friend dug out a notebook full of notes we passed round recently, it was hilarious though. No bitching, we were surrealist comedians and it's a miracle we passed any exams!

Lovely!

I wrote a diary from age about 7 to 10 - full of absolute corkers! Make me cringe but I can't throw them away! They are in the loft so can't get to them right now but there is a lovely paragraph about how a boy I liked sat next to me on the school bus and I have written "be still my beating heart" in capitals underneath - I must have been about 13!

x

I have quite a few old diaries. And no, you're not getting any extracts from them I keep them because in amongst the cringing mindwank they document a few important events in my young life. Unfortunately they are also testament to the transitory nature of memory - lots of entries that begin "I will never forget the magic of tonight", no actual record of what happened that night, I now have no idea wtf I was on about.

Oh yeah, some absolute wish-the-floor-would-open-up conversations! I was also a whiny, bitchy teenager. I'm sad because I really didn't think I was at all! My rose tinted view of myself is shattered, shattered I tell you!

Also, did anyone cover their metal pencil cases in tipex so they could write all over them? I found one of those a couple of years ago

I wrote a diary from 15-25.

I'm sure it's full of humiliating cringworthiness

If anyone reads it after I've kicked the bucket I'll turn in my grave

"be still my beating heart" LOVE IT!

The one things I regret about being a ruthless chucker outerer is that I dont have any of these things. I took myself incredibly seriously and obviously no one understood me or my life or my feelings at all I would love to have a wee insight into the angst of my young life!

Having said that, I have a 14 year old dd and some of the things she comes out with do make me smile. Infact I have been accused of laughing at her more than once when actually I was smiling at how she says exactly the same things I said because clearly, I dont understand her either!

I have several diaries in boxes in various places, oh, and a notebook in which I wrote mostly bad fiction/fanfiction and cringingly bad song lyrics

Unfortunately I turned 13 in 2001 and therefore variations of these things still exist in various places on the internet most of which I can't remember the passwords for and therefore can't even delete...

Ooh yes, I kept a diary from when I was about 15 or 16. I cringe a lot when I accidentally stumble across anything I wrote back then. I had a crush on one of the popular kids who wouldn't have looked twice at me. That lasted for a long time, and the way I describe him in those diaries....

Vomit-inducing doesn't even begin to describe my words.

Oh I have the Diaries of Fear. Kept between the ages of 12 and 18 - sat right now in the cupboard under the stairs. I don't know what to do with them - they're excruciating. Awful, self-indulgent shite. And I was what you might call promiscuous and all that is detailed. Graphically.

I haven't binned them because a) they were hugely important to me once and b) they inadvertently chart my mother's cancer and her death when I was 16, and my reaction. to it. But I must bin them because one day I will be hit by a bus and one of the DCs will read them and that will be horrific. Although, I'll be dead so I won't know. But they'll still judge me.

The moral of the tale is - never keep a diary.

There are cassette tapes out there from the mid-80's

At least I got to burn keep my youthful written indiscretions...culling as we speak so the innocent are protected (me mainly)

I remember writing a list (and keeping it updated) of people I fancied that year. I nearly died when I read some of them! And those weird games when certain letters corresponded to a number and when you added up the values from your names you'd get the percentage of how compatible you were. Utter rubbish clearly....

I really didn't explain that well! is my enemy!

That's it hassled, I didn't write them for anyone at the time (pre-DC) but now I'm older and have changed into a respectable upstanding parent I wouldn't like anyone to define who I was by them.

But you can't get rid because your DC might see it as a positive to have such an insight into their parents lives

We did the note thing too, and I still have a notebook from sixth form we used to write in when we were drunk. Some of it is quite funny, but mostly, I've forgotten how the jokes started and they don't make sense any more. I mean, a page covered in the words "beef" and "mince", in several different handwritings?

Thankfully I've got rid of all the terrible slash fiction I wrote about footballers. I still live in fear that my mum found it and read it, and is still just waiting for the right moment to bring it up.

I was at school with DH. We have pictures in our leaving book - he is trying to look moody and cool in his leather jacket (but he had all his hair then) and I am pulling my jumper down and grinning like a cheshire cat

Slinky, DH and I were 96
Not that I calculated it

Arf at the numerology Previously

We did that, and it had added credibility because it was from a book on the occult

of course that turns into 15 if you take it one step further...

Bogeyface I'm a chucker-outer too, sometimes I regret not having any of that kind of stuff to look back at, and other times I'm really glad there's no physical evidence of just how horrifically cringeworthy I really was. It's too awful to contemplate.

I can't remember how to do it! Was it loves ? gawd my brain just doesn't work anymore! not that I want to check that my DH of 10 years is compatible

Don't worry Hassled. I have whole photo albums ("the rave years") that will be kept under lock and key until long after my death, lest the DC should stumble across them

And I remember doing the number thing, and SWOONING if I got 99%

Slinky don't you have to count the vowels or something?

Or, no, the numbers of the letter L, O, V, E, S?

Tape players....I've just remembered an evening we decided to drink as much as possible and record our conversations I think it was for an English Language project but we couldn't use any of it!

Yes! It's LOVES but what were the numbers? Wonder if it's googelable..