My First Diary (Nothing In My Life Has Changed) - Taboo Tuesday #9

In a time before three-year-olds instagramed about jeggings--

"Oooh look at that beezy! Thinking she a Lala. Mm-mm, gurl, you ain't a Lala, you a Po fo sho."

In an era when skirts were shorts and shorts were pants --

("Skorts + Shants," circa 2015. $5,250)

--when people talked to the hand and bracelets were slapped... 

(And illusions were shattered.)

... There was a most marvelous invention called the Book Fair.

But if you're reading this you should already know that, right? Because prior to using the internet, you have to have gone to a book fair, right??

"Yo dawgs, what the fuck's a book?"

Anyway, between 1999 and 2004, I bought precisely four things from the Scholastic Book Fair -- the same things, every... single... year:

1) A blisteringly witty poster with baby animals on it that then went on my bedroom walls where they all stayed until they were ruthlessly torn down my senior year of high school. (Which was easily the most traumatic thing that happened during my senior year of high school.)

2) A cool bookmark, which I cleverly didn't need because I never actually bought books.

3) One of those Teacher's Pet things, which I liked, because if you bought enough, you could just do puppet shows for yourself instead of having friends.

4) A diary. (Exclusively with kitties and/or puppies.) Fitted with an iron-clad lock.

Because sure, Pups may rock, but Pops be tryin-a get into my shit.

That being said, I only actually wrote in one of my diaries, and that book fair year was 1999.

Fun fact children, they didn't have fancy fonts like "not Times New Roman" in 1999.

Even though my Diary is technically privit:

I'm going to let you read it for learning purposes. Even though if you do pick up my diary, and you're not supposed to:

"You Suck" (Right hand side, next to the AIDS stains)

So 1999. Also known as the last year before our alien overloards dissassembled America's extremely intricate interwebs comprised of Ebaumsworld and Ask Jeeves. 

OH NOO! Y2K! DON'T LET IT STEAL YOUR GEOCITIES!!!

Pause, sorry, I don't usually like to get serious, but on that note -- let's take a moment of silence for all the fallen Geocities.

~*~*NeVeR fOrGeT.*~*~

Pour one out.

So, 1999.

That was the year I was 7-- 

Big year, first I had to finish up filming "Wayne's World," then I had to learn how to send people who thought bad things to a corn field with my mind.

It was also the year that I joined my elementary school's dance team.

It might be tough to distinguish, but I'm the one on the very bottom, all the way to the right.

At the time, I had a major big crush on Chase, the only boy on the Mustang dance team, who I showed my love for by twisting his arm as hard as I could.

But shitlord child Quinn aside -- I was a 1st grader, and I mondo like-liked the cool 6th grade boy who was actively choosing to partake in a recreational activity that involved a lot of Spandex.  

Not only was I years out of his league, I had little baby Quinn anxiety. And that made my stomach hurt. My stomach never hurt more than the day that our hopefully-not-a-molestor dance instructor invited us to sleep over as a group at her house. 

After advice from my father about how a diary worked, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to try writing an entry, so I wrote my greatest fear into it, as I hid my sleeping bag like a frightened snail, pretending a 12-year-old Spandex God wasn't ten feet away playing with a Skip It.

Apr. 1E 1PPP

I hat today I have a acke in my stamick.

I think aside from what is clearly number dyslexia (which I should get retroactive extra-time-on-tests for), you can also see that I had the gift of brevity. Writing was always in my blood. You can also note what will become incredible creativity in how I've chosen to spell. Despite spelling difficult words incorrectly, I haven't even managed to stumble upon the phonetics. Really here, it looks like I'm working more on the feeling of the words than the letters that go in them.

Hope that clears everything up (including your question about whether or not I took a Multimedia Literacy class in college). 

The particularly interesting thing about this entry was that, after writing it, the kids -- including Chase -- saw my diary and tried to steal it so that they could read my most precious thoughts.

I guarded that mother fucker with my LIFE (and maybe cried). I wasn't going to let anyone, ESPECIALLY not Chase, read that entry because I was so embarrassed about the acke in my stamick. I was terrified he'd think that meant I had diarrhea farts or something -- which, of course, only made me more anxious, which only made more of an acke in my stamick.

Ultimately Todd came to pick me up.

Because of how traumatizing that night was, it was also the last time I wrote in my diary.

... Until 7-?-01.

Looking at this post it makes me realize the beauty of a diary, and this blog, I guess, in that you can do away with formalities. You are only talking to you and, perhaps, your loved ones, so you are able to delve into the deepest, most enlightening thoughts and emotions.

7-?-01
Hello it has been two years. I am 9 right know. My teacher was Mrs. Berg. bye bye

Fortunately the same day I decided that I wanted to write a little poetry about a topic that has plagued mankind for centuries: the color red.

7-?-001

Red.

Red is the 

beging of a rainbow

It's fiery like a vol-

cano that busts

red is your blood

your flesh you

Again, in case you didn't catch how genius that is, I've performed reading of it, to capture the majesty:

But a month later, something happened in my life that was so horrible that having a diary finally made sense. My grandfather died.

The diary was a release. It was a friend when I felt like I couldn't talk to anyone. So I did, I let all the horrible emotions flow out in, what I think, is my first, really evocative and truthful piece of writing.

August 2, 2001: "Grandpa died yesterday. Im relly upset. My dads computer broke. This week sucked."

Stellar list. 1) Dead grandpa 2) Dad's computer broke. 3) Shitty week. 

What can I say, gotta end with the big one. 

Good to know that 9-year-old Quinn's priorities are straighter than that time Katy Perry totally rejected Miley Cyrus' wiggly mouth eel. 

Technically, however, there is one more post in my diary. But I wasn't the one to write it. On the same day I made my entry, my brother must have seen me tucked away in bed, scribbling in my little blue book, crying about my dad's computer.

So later that night, when I was asleep, he crept over and wrote this:

Which, honestly, I didn't see until years later -- which is great because that fucking brother. Always gotta show me up. Sure Max, mix medias, that's fine, make your poem rhyme, phenomenal. You know how to write numbers and dates?

Really, looking back on my first diary. I'm able too see nothing in my life has really changed, in order of things that trouble me most: boys, anxiety, stamick ackes, having to go through formalities, dead people, and, most importantly, broken personal items.

bye bye

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