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?

28%

ooooops

DaenerysTargaryen Ooh, thank you, that's me unclenching my buttocks now...but remembers recent thread about MN'er winning 'retro' 35mm camera, and waiting for 'cassettes' to make a comeback

(I still have my Now That's What I Call Music 1 tape, and NTWICM releases thereafter, if anyone fancies a hobble down memory lane?)

Like your MPLIAB game, Brian!

We day 'ave barns in the Black Countray, it'd have to have been an alley or 'on the tip'

I have an actual tiny smear of my lost-virginity blood on a notebook somewhere. It's in my parents' garage in an eighties vanity-case from Argos. Locked, thankfully.

I was an awful little cunt as an older teenager but now I am forty and my Mum is needing me it's nice to be able to pay it all back while I am still able to do it. I've applied successfully for the money she is entitled to and I visit most days because her dementia means that if I don't, she thinks i haven't been in contact for years

garlic we were in a town - not a barn in site ha ha! Hormonal and overactive imaginations, what were we thinking!!

about sex and boys and anything that didn't involve learning academic stuff

I read my daughters diary the other day. She has a notebook (that she is happy for us to read) full of poems, jokes and her drawings.

So I picked up what I thought was her notebook and discovered it was actually a diary with similar patterned cover.

There was one page where she had written some terrible things about me. Saying I was unfit to be a mother, that she couldn't wait to see the back of me. How I had ruined her life.

She is nearly 16

OK, names we are known by, let's try that instead...

22021
4223
645
109
19

Nope, your numbers do not work for me!

i wonder if i knew you, gremlin... 'be still my beating heart' was something me an my chums used to say at that age. i think they thought it was poetic but i happen to know i got it off a Garfield cartoon.

Betty sounds about right, I remember I truly loathed my mum at that age.

I don't now, I didn't by the time I got to 17, I was just a little cow-bag at 15/16 with too much pent-up rage and no idea why or where to siphon it!

am I the only one who read BertieBott's post and thought - wow she must only be like 15 or something?!

But yes, I have bags and bags of this stuff. Recently found the LOVES percentage for DP and I that I did 14 years ago. And all my old diaries. I think EVERYONE should keep a diary in their youth so that when their kids are teens and being utterly unbearable and self absorbed and and narcissistic, they can refer back and remember how it's pretty much impossible to be anything but.... (or was that just me?)

Ummm, that's interesting, Winter ...

Brian - cool, we could have had barns then!

If 16-year-olds don't hate their mothers, Betty, they're not detaching properly. Rest assured, you've raised a healthy teenager who's currently in the throes of becoming a healthily independent adult :)

Betty

Oooo Aww Betty, try not to take it to heart.

I said some awful things about/to my parents at the same age, I probably meant them at the time, but she'll get to a point when she realises she's talking bollocks and being a drama queen.

And then be dead, dead embarrassed

Nobody else did the blood sample? and the exact date and time? Recording is IMPORTANT.

No wonder DS is autistic. He didn't stand a fucking chance with me as his mother.

FLAMES: A= Affair (or it did with us anyway).

I burned my diaries some time ago.

However I recently found a box of letters, and read one that my friend sent to me (about 16 years ago) describing a one night stand and getting her first vaginal orgasm. I immediatly told her about this and she has made me promise to take this information to my grave. I think I will have to, as she has equivalent letters sent by me.

Aaaah! I kept a diary from age 15 onwards, but it drifted off when I had kids at 28.. somewhat - I still kept one sporadically, whilst pregnant and in the early years...reading the early diaries - I used to cringe - but now am far enough from 15 to roll my eyes and think 'Oh bless!' (am 42 now)

I have diaries from when I was in labour with the children - one is punctuated by contraction timings, and (in early labour) "am trying to read 'Dracula' but have read the same page 4 times now, cos the contractions keep interrupting and I ...Arrghh!" (7 mins apart, 45 seconds long) " Blimey - I remember how much it hurts now - am going for a bath..."

The early diaries are entertaining, and although they are filled with " My mum hates me, and wishes I had never been born!" (she was fine, and just dealing with a teenager) "Had a great day at college today!" (A boy I liked noticed me) and "Gave him something to think about" (Karate competition, kicked someone very lightly on the head and won the fight..) "I need some new clothes!" (I didn't) "Where is my life going - am adrift!" (existential teenage angst!)

I also have a set of notes me and me mate passed to each other, about period pains, and wanting to emigrate! It was somewhat in sympathy on my part, cos I didn't start my periods till I was 16...

Bloody hell! now I have my own teenager - a 14 yr old boy! who is taller then me, with hairy legs,who has to shave once a week! But he still talks to me - not about absolutely everything - that would be unnatural - at 14 - you can't hope to be privvy to their very innermost thoughts - just to be there for them - but he still tells me stuff, about what he thinks and feels, and occasionally - with studied indifference - he indirectly asks for advice. I have to pretend I'm not giving advice, and talk in general terms - It makes me smile!

Oh FFS, DP has about 5 million middle names. You do realise I will have to do this calculation now properly and everything?

Oh dear. I think he's broken it also with all of his "Es".

What is the official protocol on two digit numbers within a line?? Stealth? Carrying numbers? Help!

If you have 572
then you add 5 and 7 to make 12, and you add 7 and 2 to make 9
so you have 129
and then you keep going
possibly forever

20133
2146
3510
861
147
511
62

62% ... not bad considering it took me ages to find where the adding of numbers started!

My childhood games involved jumping over a skipping rope singing '...sex, marriage'. Can't recall the rest though. And you had to be thinking of a boy you fancied at the time. Mind you, I was about 10.

Bertie spell them however you like to get your desired percentage.

FLAMES passed me by, unfortunately, that could have provided some valuable insight!

I remember one time I saw a boy I fancied in the paper shop, he asked to borrow 5p as he didn't have enough money. I was so stunned that he knew my name, I was completely over the top and gushy and proceeded to dig out 5p for him. (He never talked to me again, nor gave me back the 5p. Bastard.)

Okay, I'll try that

310104
41114
5225
747
1111
222
44%

Oh.

:(

am sat here in tears.

Inspired by this thread have gone and got my memory box out, had a quick look through the letters - all of which are hilarious and quite shocking! They are all from my best friend and I can only imagine how horrendous my notes to her were.

Very poignantly, I was seriously ill in our last year at school - to the point were I very nearly died :( My friend has typed me a 5 page 'this is your life' and included all the fun stuff we had done together AND listed each of the boys we fancied, broken down into each year I had forgotten half of it, what a fab keepsake!

The really funny thing is, a recurring name is that of my current best friend's husband. He and I have been friends (due to parents being friends) since I was 13 and he was 14. They have been at my house tonight, having a take-away. I am now sat here reading about how much I fancied him and the time he pulled up a small bush out of somebody's garden (oh god, so sorry to that person) and gave it to me as a token of his affection.

I will be showing his wife, ha ha!

Blimey, what a blast from the past

Okay I'll try again We always used to include the letters in "LOVES" too, I seem to remember. Or maybe just when it suited. I can't remember these important facts.

321115
53226
8548
13912
412103
53313
8644
14108
5518
1069
1617
778
1415
556
1011 (FFS this is going on forever! I'd better get a decent percentage...)
112
23%

Great.