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Sunday, August 02, 2009
who I was on the way to being who I am
I have made a resolution regarding this blog, which has been nearly killed by Twitter and Facebook, or more specifically by my addiction to Twitter and Facebook. Much easier to dash out a 140-character snippet about something than take the time to write about it - besides, it's easier to hold people's interest for 140 characters than it is for a paragraph. Or five. Of rambling. About nothing.
Anyway. Resolution: When I have a thought that's too long for Twitter, instead of giving up, I will post it here. At least it will be SOMETHING, and it'll be good practice for me to start using full sentences again, right? I may have papers to write in school, and I don't want them to come back all marked up in red: "Look up the concept of 'indefinite articles' and get back to me," would probably figure heavily, for example.
So. Without further ado, the first in the TOO LONG FOR TWITTER series (I am totally going to have to make a category for that):
My friend Beck twittered (tweeted? twitted?) about finding one of her old diaries, full of embarrassing things like quote collections from when she was eighteen, and it reminded me of one of the many, many goofy things about my youthful self. I had this bedroom, see, like many teenage girls do, and I had stuff all over the walls like banana stickers given to me by boys, and birthday cards from friends, and dried-up upside-down roses ALSO given to me by boys, and pictures drawn by the children I babysat, and Save the Whales posters, and abstract crayon drawings done by me with peace signs hidden in them because I was a Deep Person with Important Ideals. These Important Ideals were further on display in a long strip of adding-machine tape (I am not joking) on which I had written Very Deep Thoughts in black Magic Marker, and which I'd then fastened to my walls just below my ceiling like a wallpaper border except I don't think I'd ever seen a wallpaper border at the age of sixteen. It had quotes like this:
"We are the music makers; we are the dreamers of dreams." Good quote. I like it. Not knowing any better, though, I attributed this one to Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder quotes it in the 1970 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory); it wasn't until later that I found out that someone else had sorta said it first. I also had this sentence airbrushed fancifully onto a T-shirt at the fair once -- there, too, it may be noted, attributed loudly to Willy Wonka. And then I actually wore the shirt. To school. I was cool beyond your wildest imagination, is what I'm saying.
"Man was the pariah-dog, the moral leper... He was the muddier of crystal waters, the despoiler of forests, the murderer of the innocent, the challenger against God." DO YOU SEE HOW DEEP I WAS AND HOW MUCH I CARED. This was not long after I wrote a paper titled "People: The World's Worst Enemy" for my freshman English class.
I would go on but I have mercifully forgotten any further embarrassing quotations from that strip. There were many, many more. Hey, we didn't have Facebook in those days; we had to express our quippy selves somehow. (Apparently my book covers weren't a big enough canvas.)
Comments
I think I remember your adding machine tape on your wall
Posted by: debi at August 2, 2009 08:01 PM
My blog is also suffering.
I used to write 'poetry'. My Mum still has it.
Posted by: Carol at August 3, 2009 02:42 AM
I think a tee-shirt airbrushed with a quotation from "old school" Willy Wonka (even one that someone else said first) might be considered wackily cool, these days. The fact that it was incorrectly attributed might be the best part. You were obviously *way* ahead of your time. (I mean, just look at the eerie foreknowledge of wallpaper borders!)
I bet Teen Rachel would have loved those "Wallquotes"-type things-- vinyl lettering designed to go on walls. (I think they look pretty neat, myself.)
Posted by: Michael at August 3, 2009 05:01 AM
