[February, 1991] Words of Wisdom (Yeah Right!)

Thursday, Feb. 7, 1991

Dear Diary,

I really don’t have much to say but I didn’t write to you in a while so I decided it was time to fill a few pages with my wonderful words of wisdom (Yeah Right!).

I did something today that I haven’t in quite a while. I wrote a poem. It’s called “If I had one wish” and it goes like this:

…

If I had one wish,
I would wish to be free,
Free to roam the world,
Free to be what I want to be,
I would live off the land,
And then I would see,
Our wonderful Earth,
As it really should be,
Without any wars,
To make people cry,
Without any diseases,
To make people die,
Just nature and wilderness,
That we would all cherish,
That’s what I would want,
If I had one wish.

Well, now I’m going to wallow in my self-pity because I know I’m not going to get my perm. I better sign off before my parents start to lecture me.

At least I tried to balance out my “deep thoughts” about global strife and pretentious poetry with my self-pity over not being able to get a tacky hairstyle.

The truth is, I spent very little time thinking about the war and many hours being angsty about all the fun my overprotective parents prevented me from having. I don’t know why my parents didn’t allow me to get a perm, because I did have one in sixth grade.  As much as I cared about the world and our environment, it did not prevent me from contributing to the hole in the ozone layer using copious amounts of Aqua Net on the small topiary on top of my head that I sculpted my bangs into. While I didn’t realize it at the time, my parents were actually salvaging me from another foolish hair choice.

There was no saving me from the bad poetry, though. That’s something I’d have to grow out of on my own.

[November, 1988] New Nemesis, New Hair

11-10-88

Dear Diary,

So far my day is not the greatest. First of all, my mother probably won’t let me get bangs. I really really want to get them.

And I am not Marcela’s friend any more because she is such a fair-weathered friend and very much a bitch! I hate her, she always expects me to call her and Marcela started acting really stuck up because she skipped a grade.

She is definitely not coming to my party. I am beginning to hate Marcela even more than I hate Yanmei.

"Pass the Aqua Net!"

But when I went home for lunch my mom cut my bangs and they look great!

So much for Marcela being a lifesaver, those 50 names she helped obtain for my election petition now long forgotten. I didn’t think it was possible to hate anyone more than Yanmei at the time, but Marcela proved me wrong. In restrospect, I wonder how much of my ill will was caused by her being snobbish and wanting to distance herself from her former classmates and how much of it was my jealousy. I was offered the chance to skip fifth grade as well, but didn’t want to leave my friends and face a greater academic challenge, so I stayed where I was. It’s quite possible I felt some resentment toward Marcela for having the guts to do something I did not. It’s also possible that she was “very much a bitch.”

At least I was able to take comfort in the fact that I was able to finally convince my mother to allow me to get bangs. I don’t know why she resisted as long as it did. It might have had something to do with wanting to protect me from bad hair choices or from ruining the ozone layer with the copious amounts of hairspray I’d end up using in the late 1980’s. Whatever the reason, I managed to wear her down.

I was eager to get the bangs so that I could tease them up real big into a shrub-like curve on top of my head and tame them with tons (and tons, and tons) of Aqua Net. The look was even more, um… effective when the rest of my hair was crimped.

It’s nice to see that despite all the hostility toward Marcela, I was able to set aside my hatred long enough to rejoice over my new hair. All’s well that ends in embarrassing elementary school photos and the greenhouse effect.