The electric angst I felt in elementary school was enough to power any major city for a week straight, but I couldn't let the world know just how capable I was of writing music to rival that of Alanis Morissette. So, I filled up my private diary with even more deliciously awkward entries than what I recently rediscovered and plastered across the internet. Now, it is their time to shine.
11-23-07
Ah, Spongebob. The show of choice for every brooding young woman. The exact show I needed to help me channel the giddiness and excitement I was soaring on the tender wings of. Jordan, my one true love, had held open the door for me after completing an ever-important afternoon of Safety Patrol. I was ecstatic that he did this very basic and very underwhelming act of kindness for me. If you think me setting such a low bar for the guys I like was cute for ten-year-old me, just imagine how adorable it still is a decade later! But the romance didn't stop there! Mom came busting out with her camera-which is no surprise considering she is always busting out with her camera- to take a picture of the Safety Patrollers. Jordan apparently sat down next to me after hopping around the group, and that was all it took to make me POSITIVELY FOR SURE that he was in love with me. Ignorance is bliss :) :) :)
11-24-07
Not only a day after my soul was flooded with the happiness only Jordan could stir within me, ten-year-old Caroline was sorta bummed. What in the world could ever bring me down? What could pull me out of the bright light shining upon my young heart and plunge me into the suffocating blackness of Bummed-ness? Well, let me tell you: It's getting my ass beat in the parking lot of a Long John Silver's after a Hannah Montana concert. I had danced the night away to the boppiest tunes and worked up an appetite that only Sonic: America's Drive In! could satisfy. Apparently, my craving for a footlong Coney and tater tots drove me to violence. This did not bode well with my fast food fish loving family, as my butt was busted in the parking lot of a place that was NOT Sonic. Then, with puffy red cheeks and exponential amounts of poutiness, I was sat at my own table at the Long John Silver's with nobody to talk to. My parents and sister sat directly across the aisle and talked all about the concert we just came from, and how it was so amazing and fun and blah blah blah. I remember the only other person in the restaurant that night was an old man who looked at me with confusion and sympathy. I smiled half-heartedly at him to reassure him I was going to be ok despite the wickedness of my family, However, I would have punched that old man in the face too if it meant I would have gotten Sonic.
12-14-07
The end of '07 was truly throwing me for a loop. I was still so, so in love with Jordan and trying to find my way in a world that was tying me down or something like that. I was too old to be treated like a baby but too young to even be allowed to have thoughts and emotions. Like, somebody really should have told me to chill out. But, nobody did. And from those intense emotions came this gem of a poem. I remember writing it like it happened an hour ago. I had just walked from the front drive of Corryton Elementary to the back portable where my mom's classroom was. She was still up at the front with all the other teachers and remaining students whose parents didn't care about them and picked them up at the last possible second. My sister walked to the back table in mom's classroom and I followed. She began to draw on the little white board mom had propped up on an easel, and I sat in her black leather chair watching her, yet seeing nothing. I felt like Edgar Allan Poe, Blue-Period Picasso, and e. e. cummings (on a bad day) had given birth inside my heart to the Son of Sadness. I had overheard Jordan's mother talking about how big of a crush he had on a friend of mine named Jessi. Now, sitting in this chair, cranking out a poem felt like the only way to assuage my despair. Like any normal ten year old girl, slant rhyme soothed my soul. I grabbed a marker mom specifically told me not use on anything because it was her "good Overhead marker," a sheet off of her whimsical "Live, Love, Laugh" notepad, and went to work. When I got home, I taped it into my diary.
I remember when I was writing this poem, I was barely holding the marker in my hand because I was physically too weak to grip it because of the heartache I was experiencing at that very moment. I kept it hidden from Elizabeth's view as I wrote, but truthfully she was too absorbed in whatever God-awful thing she was attempting to draw. She was never too talented with her art. I gave her a sympathetic look and continued on with my sad sonnet. This is the outcome:
JB is of course Jordan. Jessi was my misery incarnate. I was so sad that I forgot the correct form of "too." I wanted to cry, and honestly I don't know why I wasn't. I cried every time the wind blew. Also, I guess I had not been being myself. I'm not sure why Caroline 2.0 decided to wear her hair in high side-ponytails, but the REAL Caroline would have never done such a thing. It would have been a low side-ponytail with a funky, wide headband. I introspectively added "he should like me for who I am" as my viewpoint on the situation began to change. I was now beginning to realize who the heck I was! I ONLY needed friends, not a BOYFRIEND (bf is slang for that, I was a busy girl with no time to spare on spelling words out all the way). However, this wave of feministic ideals did not last long as the poem was concluded with a solemn statement: JB likes Jessi. The low, rumbling finality of that statement could be felt around the world. Somewhere in China, a glass of water rippled.
