Perfectly Random #3 (How Sexy Are You?)

How sexy are you? 

Surely a question we've all asked ourselves at least once or twice. Luckily women.com had a quiz that my friend Tierney kindly printed out and notated for me. To be honest, I don't think I understood half of these questions then - and despite how well masked the answers are (really, Q15?) I may have just answered in the way I thought would get me the highest sexy score. 

Before you go rushing off to take the quiz yourself, you should know that sometime between September of 2002 and now, women.com has (sadly) gone off the grid. 

If there is any crossover in Cosmo readers and The Hindsight Project readers, I have to ask... have the quizzes gotten any better? Or is this what I can expect when trying to learn which Sex & the City character I am?

Moving along, just a few other notes from my sophomore year...

During lifeguard training:

The original inspiration for the Old Spice "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign:

And, although we didn't have our sweet 16 parties ruined like Audrey did, we did ball at the Russian Tea Room.

After a lot of deliberation in the summer following my sophomore year, I decided to return to Walsh. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the diary entry I wrote that simply said, "I hate my friends."

Next up: New adventures in Junior year!

Getting the Sad Out

I recognize that my Sophomore year of high school notes and diary entries would not be described as "fun," but I still feel the need to get all of the sad, drama-filled, angsty stuff out so you can really appreciate the funny, drama-filled angsty stuff that is yet to come. 

And so here are some of my favorite poems, self-reflections, and letters that I never sent.

Before you say anything - yes, I realize this is ruled paper and I wasn't 7 years old. However, sometimes when I couldn't sleep, I would just grab a piece of paper and write stuff down in the dark. It was always a surprise to see how it turned out in the morning!

...and?? We'll never know.

The (Incredibly Complicated) Game of Life

I may have a million diary entries and printed AOL conversations with Thomas, but I only have one note from him. ONE!

Here goes...

Comments:

• Navid didn't hit on me, but he did get me this birthday card:

• I have a picture of me in my Donato's uniform. In it, I am - for some inexplicable reason - pretending to sleep on a couch with my friend while holding a scary mask. This is what Friday nights looked like for me when I was grounded.

Oddly enough, Donato's rendezvous proved not to be enough for Thomas (or maybe my uniform scared him away!) and he broke up with me 7 days after my only note was written. For those of you with fast math skills, that is February 13th. The day before Valentine's Day. I'm fairly certain that it was the same day I had my Solon ID photo taken - because there's really no other excuse for my appearance.

A few doodles from the days following included some dark musings...

"If I cried a river, would you build a ship and sail to me? If I smiled through my pain, would it bring you closer?"

"Sometimes you can make sense of everyone else's life but your own. Because maybe you aren't supposed to understand everything that happens to you. Maybe you can't understand something so incredibly complicated as the game of life."

"The world won't make sense until you've given up on it. Time won't stand still until you're at your worst."

"Don't depend on anything or anyone. Everything can change in a second."

"There's never a perfect time for heartbreak. You'll never be ready for the end. The end won't wait for you, warn you, speak for you, or live for you. The end doesn't arrive until the last moment you feel safe."

Suffice it to say that I was pretty upset. I received a few notes attempting to cheer me up.

Comments:

• I wonder if she intentionally wrote this note on the "self-esteem" page of the planner to help me get the hint. 
• Apparently my mood swings weren't very subtle. 
• Hey, I love Boston Market!

Comments:

• Well of course I get it now, this isn't the end of the world. At least I knew I got dumped this time!
• I guess I really liked to eat if everyone is closing their notes to me with food references...

The cheering up didn't work right away, and I've got some of the archives from my attempts at being a writer/poet/songwriter to prove it. Stay tuned, but - ya know, I wouldn't depend on it.. or anyone, for that matter.

The Biggest MooStake

Despite executing my master plan to win Thomas back, Sophomore year was difficult for me - through nobody's fault but my own.

Details aren't necessary, so I'll just say that I made some foolish choices and ended up having an '02-'03 school year student ID from two different schools.

Following the foolish choices, my parents wrote me a letter. 

Despite being a hateful little teenager, I knew at the time that their punishment technique was pretty clever and impressive. They didn't choose to ground me for a period of time (although "for the rest of your life" would have been acceptable). Instead, they chose to suspend my social activities until I had done 30 hours of service. Thirty hours of good to make up for all of the bad. 

They put the responsibility back in my hands. So if I wanted to sit around whining about how life wasn't fair, I could. But it wouldn't get me any closer to the freedom that I thought I deserved at 15. I could have finished 30 hours of community service in two weeks if I had wanted, but instead I chose to pity myself and didn't go out for two months. 

I like to think that during those months I started to be a better person, maybe a little less selfish, maybe I'd like myself a bit more, but that's probably not true... that would come later. I did, however, realize that my parents weren't "out to get me" and they didn't want to ruin my life. I realized that they were pretty freaking smart and knew what they were doing with this whole raising-kids-thing. Through everything, they still loved me and wanted what was best for me. Even if I didn't know it at the time, in hindsight, I was (and am) extremely lucky for that.

To end on a bit of a lighter note... during my first week at school #2, I made the mistake of wearing a plaid shirt (no dress code!) and an upperclassman started mooing at me from down the hall. (Because I looked like a farmer?) I was so caught off guard that I didn't even have time to dodge her before she pushed me into a locker. Public school was rough. 

My friend Hannah drew me the following picture, being sure to include that upperclassman (Dana) on her way to milk the cows.




















You'll also notice the reference to Donato's, my first "official" employer, which will be addressed in a future post.