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| Our Notebooks, dog eared and everything |
‘The Notebook’ started in my freshman English Comp class and
was shared between myself and my friend Rachel (I changed her name in case she
doesn’t want to shared just because I am sharing). I’d write a few pages over
the course of a few days, then pass the notebook to Rachel and she would do the
same. Sometimes, we’d have other people write a page or two, but for the most part,
Rachel and I did the bulk of the writing. I’m not sure why we started it, but
we kept it up the rest of high school, and even into college. After college,
when she moved away from Chicago, we kept it up by writing letters to each
other. She wrote a lot more than I
did. And of course, because I’m sort of
a pack rat, but not in a creepy hoarding kind of way, I saved them all.
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| Our Notebook predates this one |
Our communications in ‘The Notebook’ were pretty typical for
high school kids: complaints about parents, friends, boy problems, girl
problems, what were we doing that weekend, why Suzy is a jerk, why Jane
shouldn’t like Ricky, the joy I had after I quit my job at the pizza place,
Rachels’ frustration with her new manager at her job. The notebook I found started in October of my
senior year, right before Homecoming. As I flipped through the pages filled
with my hardly legible chicken scratch, every one of them started with me
fawning over a girl, let’s call her Leslie, and my disappointment at her not returning
my fawning. I was quickly taken back to
that time, the nervous pains I felt in my stomach each time I called her to
find out she wasn’t home returned to me. I was a miserable, lost, surly, whiny,
complaining (and occasionally funny) brooding seventeen-year old again.
In between descriptions of what I did over the weekend,
Rachel’s notes on the fights she had with her parents, the song lyric game
where we would each write two lines from a song and the other one would try
guess the song and artist, I whined about Leslie for months. While reading it,
I remembered that it all came to a head after the Turnabout dance in February. Leslie
and I had gone to the dance together but as soon as we were back at school on Monday,
she no longer had time for me. Spurred on by several friends I did something
bold, something I never had done before and haven’t done much since. I brought
a rose to school and gave it to at her locker, hoping that this display of
affection in front of dozens of other teenagers would make her understand my
true affections for her. Clearly, what I
said when I handed her the rose didn’t work. She said, “You shouldn’t have.”
And she meant it. Literally. Lucky for me, we both wanted to avoid a scene at
school, so she told me to call her that night.
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| Totally on my bedroom wall |
After putting it off as long as I could without calling so
late Leslie’s parents wouldn’t let her talk, I called. Leslie told me she
wasn’t ready to be in a serious relationship. She had been in a long one prior
to senior year but when her boyfriend went off to college, they broke up. I’m
not sure if I was looking for a serious relationship either, but I was looking
for at least a relationship. The bad news is that Leslie and I weren’t going to
be anything. The good news is that after months of pining and whining and
brooding and stewing and not being able to fall asleep at night, and my stomach
feeling like crap and ignoring the dozens of girls who were interested in me
(okay, there was probably at least one), at least now I knew. Reading about it even twenty-five years later
brings me right back into my bedroom, my plastic blue phone with the super long
headset chord on the floor, Michael Jordan poster alongside a Rush poster on
the paneled wall, just the lamp light from my desk illuminating my room (plus
the dirty laundry that was all over the floor).
I kept reading ‘The Notebook’ to see how I managed to
survive getting my heart ripped out and stomped on by a girl. Just a week later,
I wrote in ‘The Notebook’ that my cat, Deacon, died. She had been sick on and
off for the last few weeks. At first the vet thought it was a thyroid problem,
but then quickly determined it was heart related. I wrote in the notebook “I’m
going to get her from the vet after school to take her home then she goes to a
specialist tomorrow.”
She never made it to the specialist. She died that night
howling in pain while in my lap. I cried a lot. She was still in my lap, tears
running down my face when my brother came home from work and knocked on my
door.
Prior to re-reading ‘The Notebook’ I remembered these two
events as wholly separate. I didn’t remember that they happened the same week.
My heart got crushed and my cat’s heart gave out. I know, I’m digging deep there
for a connection, but come on, I was seventeen. That’s the kind of shit we do
when we are seventeen and any little thing makes us think that our lives are over, or we are going to end up alone, or the world is dark and miserable place, or our parents are just trying to keep us from having fun.
I closed ‘The Notebook’ and slid it back on the shelf among
its other dozen or so volumes. It was refreshing to see that in high school, at my
most miserable, I was upset about a girl who didn’t like me and sad that I had
lost my first pet, my cat. At the time,
it was devastating. But now, looking back at high school in comparison to what
has happened in 2016, things weren’t so bad for me back then. I was just a few months away from heading off to college, the track season was going well, I had my weekends free since I wasn't slinging pizza anymore. And I even went to Prom that year, with different girl (who after Prom, wait, that's another story altogether). And
while there were terrible things in 2016 and a lot of things didn't got as hoped, my personal life wasn’t
terrible. It was a hard year at work,
but 2016 doesn’t hold a candle to the two personal worst years of my life, 1983
and 1990.
So, no, I’m not here to wrap up 2016 in a few sentences or
to offer bold predictions of doom and gloom for 2017. But, shit, it could be a lot worse,
right? At least I’m not pining over some
girl who doesn’t like me. I've a wife who I love (and I'm pretty sure she likes me too) and three kids who drive me crazy but make me smile at the same time, and two of them are even excited to see me when I get home from work. So good riddance to 2016 and bring it on, 2017. I’m ready
for you. And in twenty-five years when I’m reading through the digital detritus
of my life, the angst I displayed in my early forties, I expect that I will
look back and realize that maybe it wasn’t all as bad as it seems right now.
Right?
Thanks for reading.
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