We spend a lot of time at my parents’ house in the summer. They have a pool and a back yard, so it’s great for Annie and Rigby…and who am I kidding, it’s great for Mike and me, too. We call it Camp Gramma & Bampa.
Being at my parents’ house isn’t all play and no work, though. My parents are so excited for Mike and me to buy a house because then they won’t have to store all of my stuff. It never fails, just when I’ve settled onto the couch with a jar of peanut butter and a stack of magazines, my mom will say, “Oh, if you don’t have anything to do, why don’t you go to your old room and THROW SOME STUFF AWAY!”
It’s like when she comes to my house to “help me” but really just expects me to clean while she plays with Annie. I’m not a machine, mom!
It’s been a long, slow process of purging…and it’s hard because I am a hoarder. Not a hoarder like, “OMG, I think there is a family of cats in this junk,” but more of a “I can’t throw away this partly broken anchor charm because what if my daughter pledges my sorority whaaaaaaaaaat iiiiiiiiiiiffffffffff.”
I love the old pictures, of course. Especially the ones where I am Annie’s age and my parents are my age. Those are a trip. It’s also been fun finding old journals. Over the last three years or so I’ve found three or four journals…and they all have like, five entries each. Then I curse myself for having horrible discipline until I remember I’ve done an OK job of writing here regularly. If only there were blogs when I was 12!
I don’t know about those of you who look back on old journals…but can you understand what the hell you were saying? I read one last night that said, “Does the NS affect TR? I feel wronged by the H.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, PAST HEATHER? What kind of craziness was going down eleven years ago that I felt I needed to write in code?
The whole freaking five pages of the journal is all, “I wish he hadn’t gotten D.” “It’s so SFLN, OMG.” Was I trying to send my current self text messages?
Oh, Past Heather. I am definitely confused and frustrated. Also, those are the only complete sentences in the journal.
I am going to need a decoder ring for this. I really really want to know if the NS affected the TR!
Gemini-Girl says:
I have diaries- TONS of them, starting from age 7 onwards. They are pretty embaressing to say the least. I even wrote about my sexual exp with my first boyfriend- i would die if the girls read through them one day- which I’m sure they will. Unsure if i should burn them or not.
heather says:
I’m no teen/university age secret decoder agent.. but maybe all of the ‘d’ means drunk?
Either way… both then and now, you’re kind of getting screwed by the ‘H’…. the difference is now we can assume that ‘H’ represents ‘past Heather’
Rebecca says:
I had kept a couple of shoeboxes of old letters that friends had written me. They were a trip. I mailed a couple of friends their letters back…………..we had a great time laughing.
Jessica says:
Clearly you were a Sigma Sigma Sigma The anchor charm gives it away.
Heather says:
Nope! Delta Gamma!
Madi G. says:
Moi Aussi! I still wear my anchor — it’s on my charm bracelet.
suzy says:
i knew i liked you for a great reason….20 years later and i have to hold back from buying anchor things it is torture these days now that anchor clothes are in fashion!! and i’m with you – you do need to save those things just in case annie decides to be a DG … or a niece!!
Heather says:
I know!! My niece could totally go DG. She’ll get a bit of encouragement from me AND mike’s sister, who was also a DG!
Lindsey says:
“Was”!? You mean “is”, don’t you!? Both my daughters are DGs so this is exciting!! They both went to Furman U and I was so excited to start looking for anchors (and Raggedy Ann dolls) the minute they pledged! Did you know Julia Louise Dreyfuss from Seinfeld is a DG? My girls definitely felt like sorority life saved their college career. They would have transferred to another school if not for their DG sisters. I wasn’t in a sorority, my family thought sororities were only for rich, snobby girls. Glad to discover late in life that that is not the case. I can’t wait to tell my girls that Annabel and Maddie’s mom is a DG (my oldest’s name is Annah and I call her Annabel all the time, btw)—- boy, this is boring, sorry!
Madi G. says:
Tri Sigma’s symbols are a sailboat, BTW, not an anchor.
They also use a skull and crossbones symbol, associated with their motto of “Faithful Until Death” or something to this end.
My best friend was in Tri Sigma. *shrug*
Anthony from CharismaticKid says:
Wow that old journal is awesome.
I wish I had something cool like that. Oh wait… I think there’s a time capsule in the backyard of my first house when I was a kid!
Maybe I’ll go back there one night with a shovel and dig it up… the new family living there won’t mind.
Becca says:
It’s funny how secretive we all thought we needed to be. And how important everything was. I love the “lonliness, confusion and frustration” part. I find it truly amusing how completely and honestly miserable I was when I was 15. wallow wallow wallow.
I’m not saying we all didn’t have things to be upset about – it’s just how teenagers deal with them – soooooooooo dramatic!
Kate says:
Your handwriting was great back then! And you wrote so well! I read my old journals and I wonder if I knew what coherence and sentence structure even was!
That said, I clearly – clearly – remember that my best friend from middle school and I made up a very complicated code when we were about 13 that we used for a year and a half. It wasn’t just abbreviations either; it was whole other fictitious words to replace common themes between us! And we didn’t just write in code, we spoke it! One of our crushes was something that started with a Z – like Zapatosa or something like that, picked because his last name started with Z (yeah, we were real CIA-level spy kids back then) – and we referred to him as that privately. At all times. And mundane words had secret versions, too – love, like, date, boyfriend, girlfriend, all the teen staples – in order to protect ourselves! So when I wanted to tell her that I was desperate for Zapatosa to be my flickidid and coolickity me on the nimipib, I could write it in a note that no one but her would understand meant that I wanted the guy to be my boyfriend and ask me on a date at the graduation trip. Or whatever the words were, I am clearly making these up right now because I have lost the code.
Which is the thing – I lost the code. So I have old journals (which I have kept; I am a single woman in a one-bedroom apartment with enough junk for ten apartments!) that I literally cannot read. And I was a prolific journaler, too, so these aren’t a handful of entries – they’re years of my life!
Angela says:
Hey, I’m a DG too!!! Ah, those were the days. Still have my badge (and pledge ribbon, lol!) to hopefully pass on to my 7 year old daughter someday!
I ran across a bunch of old letters last year going through my box o’ “stuff” in the basement – what a trip
Kari says:
Since I am a youngin’, the “code” that my best friend and I used (and that I subsequently used in my diary at the time) was completely Harry Potter based. And even though this all happened “only” about a decade ago, I really have no idea who is who when I happen to look back on it. I know that I am Hermione, and of course, my love interest was Ron. That’s about all I’ve got. I also put stars in place of words/names I didn’t want people to know, I suppose assuming that I’d remember what they meant… but all it leads to is pages detailing, “And then **** and I went to the ******* and while we were there we saw ***** and talked about *****… OMG.”
*facepalm*
Gale @ Ten Dollar Thoughts says:
I had the exact opposite problem. I was an avid journaler through high school and college and I documented nearly everything in my life in excrutiating detail. A year or so ago I decided that the girl in those pages (needy, insecure, melodramatic) no longer represented the person I am today. So I ripped the pages out of each spiral notebook (there were 7 or 8 of them) and placed put them in the (confidential and locked!) shred bins at my office. I did read several entries before I threw them away, just for the sake of nostalgia, but it felt good to let go of that old version of myself.
Madi G. says:
Hah — I can one-up you on this one. LOL
In addition to code words, I used code names. Code names.
I gave a code name to every person. Every. Person. So even when I do figure out the odd code words, I have no idea *whom* I was talking about!!
-Madi G.
Heli says:
I love it! I can totally relate. I have one journal entry where I talk about my love for “Election” who was the boy I started liking on Election Day. Clever, huh?
I think that’s part of the reason I wanted a girl (and got one). To relive it. Fortunately, or unfortunately in some ways, we don’t actually have to do it again.
Enjoy taking a walk down memory lane!
Michelle in MO says:
I used numbers as codes for boys I liked, you know so pesky cousins or friends couldn’t figure out who 803 was.
Elizabeth says:
****IF**** what do you mean *if*. Annie is a legacy my daughter has so much anchor stuff, I can’t help it. It may be because I’m a southern girl, but I would love my daughter to be a DG. You need to sign Annie up for the legacy program; it’s on the website!
Side note, if you love Lilly Pulitzer, they’re coming out with a Delta Gamma print this fall!! So excited
Disclaimer: I swear I’m not a crazy 30 year old still obsessed with sorority days. Just involved in my alum group and get excited when anyone talks sorority
amourningmom says:
No clue what the code could be but I hope you figure it out! You could use this as a reason why you should not have to go through your old stuff when you are at your parent’s house. Take care.
Tracie says:
I looked back at some of my teenage journals a couple of years ago, and I did the same thing. What was with us and the code language. I finally figured out that one of these abbreviations was a friend’s initials, and I called her to see if she could help me decode the rest of the sentence, but alas, she was no help.
Annie says:
HA!! LOVE IT! My best friend and I used to talk about ppl in our notes to each other and spell their names backward…because there was NO chance they would ever figure THAT out. I kept a diary from age 12 to age 16. Then all of the sudden I stopped writing and started re-reading what I had written. Well, I ended up having a “bonfire” in my bathroom sink. What possessed me to write about losing my virginity? What possessed me to write about smoking pot and having the munchies? What possessed me to write about a secret relationship I had for a YEAR with a guy my dad would have happily gone to prison for…eliminating? Now I wish I hadn’t burned those journals. I could probably write a best seller.
Jennifer says:
I have all my journals going back to 1981. My first ever entry was about McEnroe beating Borg at Wimbledon. I can read it all, and understand everything, which is sort of the problem. I always had this image of my young self and really deep and precocious, but the journals don’t lie. I was as ordinary 12 as the next 12 year old.
Ray says:
LOL! How funny. Maybe those are Code Words for people’s names…? Maybe.