9:10 pm
Life seems to have taken a turn for the worse with me -- or at least my attitude toward it has. Quite a bit has happened since my last entry. I still love my job. But some other experiences connected with it are not so nice. I would like to write down my "date" on Friday, but it is too long and complicated. I think that there is really little chance of forgetting it. I only know now that whenever I think about Dan T. I feel sick. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!!!
Another sad thing is a closing of a chapter for me. Boys, at least for the time being. I know Gary is completely out of reach. Bob, I found out today, is cold toward me. Jeff is still friendly -- but differently. The only person I still have hope in is Dan F. Today I practically told him and the entire yearbook staff my feelings toward him. I said something like he is a great guy or person or something. I also had a long awaited chance to tell Chris C. what I thought of her.
Teaching isn't so important to me any longer. I think I am discouraged because of everything that has happened to me lately and I am blaming it on TAP or something.
Why do I feel smothered? I really don't have troubles. I don't quite know. Life is cruel. The best things in life are the simple pleasures. The worst things then are simple problems that attack and attack endlessly.
Note:
The "date" mentioned in the first paragraph was one of the most interesting things that happened to me in my youth. I'm annoyed with my past self that I didn't write it down. I don't remember being that upset by it. How many other people can say they were someone's birthday present?
One Friday afternoon while I was working at Ben Franklin a tall man walked up to me and asked if I'd like to be his son's birthday present. I don't remember my initial reaction, but after talking about it I agreed to do it, only if he talked to my family first. It seems as if, as he walked out of his house to go to the dime store, he asked his son if there was anything he wanted from the store. I guess the son replied, "Yeah, bring me a cute checkout girl," so the father thought it would be a funny prank to actually bring a "check-out girl" home for his son's party.
I'd heard of the son. If he had been wildly popular I would have said no, but since he was not much higher than I was on the teen-aged scale of popularity, I agreed to do it. Mr. T (who later I would learn was the music director of my Grandmother Patrick's church) drove me to my house so he could meet my parents and assure them I would be safe. I wanted to change my clothes, but he wanted me in my ugly blue uniform. I did bring along a change of clothes though.
We drove to his house and he presented me to Dan. Dan was surprised and seemed to be amused. The family seemed to do this sort of thing a lot. I remember that dinner was chicken. They ate it by cutting it with knives and forks. I'd never eaten chicken that way before.
I think we then went to a football game or basketball game and then came back to the T. house for a party. It turned out that Dan was a little more popular than I'd expected. I remember not having a very good time at the party, so that is probably why I felt weird about it and didn't want revisit it in my journal.
Dan and I actually remained friends of a sort until graduation. I heard he went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. His father died of a brain tumor when I was in college; I heard about it from a teacher at Highland School when I was doing a brief teaching practice there.
A quick search on the Internet tells me that Dan is a "weapons engineer" now living in Georgia. He may work at Robins AFB. He is a runner and has finished at least two marathons in the past six months.
I'm sorry that I was nasty to Chris C. She was a pretty nice person. I guess I had/have a problem with authority. She was head of the yearbook staff, I think, and probably told me to do something I didn't want to do.
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