Journal 10/1 (1984)

It’s Monday again. I demand a recount! There was supposed to be a vote on whether or not to accept this Monday. I don’t. I personally refute the existence of this day. We’re on special schedule for something, but — wait — election of officers, I think. Mr. Steele, why are you handing out folders? I’d rather not know. Today almost guarantees to end up badly. This may seem very pessimistic, but then again it’s Monday, ain’t it?

The Monday after a week off work is brutal.

This is David in the early 1990s, before he got his pilot’s license and spent his free time RC flying. That’s where he met Hermann Hoepken — on the field.

Hermann Hoepken
Dusseldorf,
late 1970s

Rest in peace, Hermann, it’s been one year tonight since you’ve gone. I’ve gotten to know quite a bit about you in the past year, through Helma. But I wish I would’ve met you. David told me a lot of Hermann stories and I understand why he looked up to you so much. You and Bill were like fathers to him, and for that I am eternally grateful. Last but certainly not least, thank you for Helma. She’s a gem, but you already know that — you did the smart thing and married her. I promise I will continue your tradition of anniversary roses and buy her all the hazelnut lattes her heart desires.

Technorati tags: letter, biography

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These photos serve to prove how widespread perms were in the ’80s. A global follicle scourge, if you ask me.

By the time this photo was taken — probably Spring ’85 ’84 — David’s hair had grown out, but you can see it better in the earlier photo below.

From the journal writing assignment:

Journal 12/3 (1984)

I feel much better now that my hair is curly. I took (with help) 2 rolls of film for the Pontiac for paint study and “before” pictures. I’m not sure if I have work today. Have you noticed that nothing I’ve said thus far goes together? I just love winter. I just love corduroy. I just love Tums. I wish I could write in color. *Freeeee kpow kpow Lots of colour all over your eyebrows and chrome fringe freeooooow ahhh ahhh.*

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Journal 10/18

I have a job interview this afternoon at JC Penney’s. I hope I get it. Wasn’t that an interesting topic? No, there’s more. It’s a job in the stockroom for the Christmas season. Pretty clean work, righteous bucks. I’ll need it; because I bought a car – another car, and not just any car, a 1953 Pontiac Chief. I’m keeping my Vega for driving and restoring the Pontiac. If the Pontiac gets cleaned up and running OK, maybe I’ll drive it daily. But maybe not, because mileage is terrible.

Righteous bucks! Hee!

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More excerpts from David’s Grade 12 journal writing assignment, circa late 1984:

Change

I changed more last summer than I ever have before. I started having all these new ideas and experiences. I got a lifeguard job down in Scranton, and made a whole new set of friends in the neighborhood of the pool where I worked. I never owned a car before this summer, and now I know what a pain that can be. I dieted on and off all summer, and lost 45 pounds. All the changes I went through this summer I’m glad for. I take a lot more responsibility for myself, but I still enjoy myself more than ever.

Knowledge

What can we know? That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable. Or have we simply forgotten it and are too ashamed to say anything? By “knowable” I mean that which can be said to be known or to possess a knowness (knownness?) or knowability, or at least can be mentioned to a friend. In all seriousness, knowledge is an asset. If that is the case, someone will have to think of another name for small donkeys.

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In my unpacking, I found this Polaroid of David from when he was 2 or 3 years old and tried to clean it up a bit. It was too adorable not to share!

Here’s a piece on driving from David’s Grade 12 Journal (part of a writing assignment):

Journal 10/16 (1984)

Today’s journal is an editorial on the 55mph speed limit. My position is that I’m against it. Many cars and equally many roads are built to go much faster. The “fact” that better fuel economy occurs at 55 is only because since the 55 limit was imposed, cars are geared to go that speed efficiently. (These are the cars that have the red 55 on the speedometer.)

However, many new cars, foreign cars and old cars have efficient gearing above 55, some very much above. As for saving lives, anything you hit at 55, be it stationary or another car, will do the same to you as it would at 80. But some say “you can’t control a car going that fast”. Cont’d tomorrow.

Journal 10/17

Topic 10/16 continues: anyone who can drive through a parking lot at 35 can drive through traffic at 80. Many highways in the Midwest are long, straight, lonely, and smooth. If you have a car built to drive at high speed efficiently, there is no crime in saving time. One thing that does irk me, and could be a problem were the speed limit higher, is that people often cross the highway in the dark, in inopportune places. I barely missed one on 6 & 11 several days ago, at night.

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(I took this photo a year ago, at the back of the house in Pennsylvania.)

Journal 11/8 (1984) – Frost

During the summer, frost is pretty and makes pictures on your windowpane but in winter it’s the nasty stuff you have to scrape off your car windows. I had to scrape some off this morning, because no matter how pretty the pictures are, you have to see out. If there really is some little Jack Frost guy who paints the pictures, he should be locked up for the winter.

The weather here in Toronto has been all over the map. Today and yesterday the windchill factor was beastly, but a couple of days ago it was warm enough to ditch the scarf, and a couple of nights ago we walked home through pouring rain — accompanied by thunder AND lightning! — that turned the snow to slush. Snow that fell only the day before!

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A perfect post for Monday, methinks. Ah, the ennui of high school. It cracks me up. (Now, that is.)

Journal 10/15 (1984)

Happy Monday to you!

My image of Mr. Steele has just been shattered — he doesn’t seem to care what’s going on in the rest of the school. Apathy is a terrible thing. Someday someone will do something about all the apathy in the world. But not me. Just now on the announcements they said what Mr. Steele didn’t know — that Mr. Sheridan’s class is going to the courthouse. Hassan just said that “this is the silliest thing I’ve ever written”. I wonder why. I’m starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for these journals. I ought to do something interesting so I could write about it. That could never happen in school.

Journal 10/23

I’m all dressed up today because they’re going to take my picture. Ask me if this delights me. Because it don’t. The color in my face won’t come out good on film, because the collar of my shirt is choking me.

For all the thirtysomethings out there: don’t you just love the 80′s high school portraiture? The backlighting and soft focus, oh dear. Mine are no better — my hair is so big it’s outside the frame. (Those photos are still in Vancouver.)

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[This entry sat in draft mode for a few hours -- I had an unexpected visitor!]

During my recent excavations, I made a small discovery: it appears to be a writing assignment for David’s last year of high school. It’s a bunch of writing on looseleaf paper with no headers or full dates. David’s handwriting looked the same to me, so at first I didn’t know how old it could be. After a bit of reading it became clear it was David at 17 years old, and it was an assignment… hence all the complaining. It may not be complete — all the papers in these boxes are loose — but I assembled the batches and tried to discern an order among the multiple numbering systems (this is David, after all).

I took the sheaf of papers to bed along with my books last night and read them all the way through, laughing at sections. Getting to know my husband 20 years before I met him is a bit of a revelation; it’s a glimpse into the mind of a 17-year old boy. (It’s been so long since I knew any!) It’s not a personal journal, after all, so I can’t report anything particularly scintillating or revealing, but its very mundaneness is amusing in itself. Casting my mind back to my own teenage years in comparison, I’m sure the juicy bits were few and far between, too. (I’ll have to ask Kimberly, we’d been pen pals for 7 years by then.)

David briefly mentioned a journal, but I didn’t think to try and dig it up in the days when he was too sick to read. I would’ve read it out loud to him, for laughs. I’ll include some entries here, now and again.

I like this one, for example:

Journal 9/25 (1984) – “Life is…”

Life is everything. Life is where it’s act. It’s “now”. It’s “what’s happening”. It’s “Everything you always wanted to do but had to be born first”. There’s so much involved in life that it would take a lifetime to write about it, so here are some of the high points.

1) Birth

If you plan to be alive, birth is the best place to start. It gives you a nice long time to get used to being alive, while being catered to by two exhausted people who have been alive much longer.

2) High School

High school is four years of unreality inserted between adolescence and adulthood. As of yet, no one has been able to explain why.

3) The Rat Race

At this period of your life, the idea is to work hard at being happy while a few billion other people are trying to do the same thing.

I also found a little cache of school photographs that beg to be scanned, to accompany these entries — for illustrative purposes, haha. Stay tuned.

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