desh | (no subject)

Looking for something to read last night, I pulled my 11th grade plan/assignment book down off the shelf. During the 5 months that I used it, February-June 1998 (right after I got back into Akiba and stopped going to UMAHS), a friend of mine and I filled up 36 otherwise blank pages with notes. We passed it back and forth during the classes we were both in, writing to each other, and apparently causing a fair amount of curiosity among our classmates, while never once, as far as I remember, getting in trouble.

Since I have some time to kill these days, I've decided to transcribe it. (This plan is ironic enough, since the thing I read last night just before the planbook was Nicholson Baker's compelling essay "Discards" in his The Size of Thoughts: Essays And Other Lumber, approximately 50 pages lamenting the destruction of library card catalogs, and the loss of data and usability that comes from transcribing all those cards into a computer database. No, really, it's much better reading and less boring than it sounds, in a way only Baker can do...)

Unfortunately I can't share most of it with you, because an intertwined half of it isn't mine to share. But there are some things I found fun that I entirely wasn't expecting and that I can put online:

Apparently back then we used the term "with" to solve the problem of how to describe someone you're entering into a romantic and/or physical relationship with. You weren't dating the person or hooking up with the person or going steady with the person, you were simply with the person. Even if you weren't actually in the same room at the time.

Moreover, being with someone didn't necessarily imply that you had kissed yet, or even that it would happen extremely soon, though it was probably on the not-too-distant horizon.

Alisa, you were apparently my best friend from camp, and in response to a series of questions about which one thing (of various categories) I would bring with myself to a desert island, you'd be the girl. I also would've brought Star Wars, Throwing Copper by Live, spaghetti, and the bible.

My sarcastic sense of humor was rather well refined by then, even though I thought I picked up most of it in college.

It's fun to talk about prom, or potential prom dates for yourself and others, even for junior prom, for months before the actual event.

I was really into Dawson's Creek.

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Do you have a job yet?

Yes, as I mentioned here a week or two ago, among other times.

I don't really feel that "with" is somehow outdated (it does still get's used at the college-level over here in MI), but I always thought it funny how "with" could encompass nearly any kind of more-than-friends relationship. I mean in middle and high school you could be "with" someone who you never actually "did" anything with (e.g. movies, kissing, etc.). In fact, especially in middle school, being "with" someone could mean as little as you "liked" each other and would pass notes in the hallway between classes.

"With" also seemed to be a social device such that each little group/clique could talk about who its various members were "with", even if said people actually spent more time talking about who they were "with" than actually spending time with the person they were supposedly "with". Whew, that probably makes a lot more sense written than it would verbalized. Woohoo for with-ness!

like 'with', another one we use is 'together'. Less general use than 'with', but shows up.

You sentimental soft (meant in a good way. at a point in my life where for once I dont mind casting a look back over my shoulder).

Alisa, you were apparently my best friend from camp, and in response to a series of questions about which one thing (of various categories) I would bring with myself to a desert island, you'd be the girl. I also would've brought Star Wars, Throwing Copper by Live, spaghetti, and the bible.

Dude, spaghetti? How little has changed. I'm surprised you didnt say Toaster Pops or whatever those things are called. You get more variety with those.

I would also like to point out that, if memory serves, you only listened to 1 track off of Throwing Copper at that point. It took my nagging you for a while to convince you that other songs on that album are worth listening to (and are, in my opinion, much better songs).

Me or Judah? If you mean me, I think you have it backwards. I'd never listened to track 1, and about half the others, before you convinced me otherwise. But I think that was before 1998. Not sure.

I meant you, and I didn't say track 1, I said 1 track... track 5 specifically.

also, check this out...

http://tlb.org/scooter.html

Home built Segway at less than half of the cost.

Every once in a while I go back and read my notebook that I used for notes also. I shold transcribe my notes also. I feel inspired now

sick, dudes. desh, remember when we used to compare journal entries of particular nights? like that akiba dance. our accounts were so different. but i think those days are gone and rightly so. [then why did i ask you about the shavuos picnic? because leaving the past behind is rough and it's tempting to do otherwise..]

I joke about the phrase "the first day of the rest of my life" a lot, but to the extent that that phrase makes any sense at all, I think that dance was the first day of the rest of my life.

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With-ness

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What a sweet-heart.

Re: What a sweet-heart.

Re: What a sweet-heart.

Re: What a sweet-heart.

Funny

sick.

Re: sick.