I graduated in 1984 from Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek, California. My 20 year reunion is in two days. Yes, that explains part of the weightloss obsession. I figure if I’m going to walk in there without husband, children, house or even a divorce, then I’d better look HOT.
I hope the DJ plays music from the early 80’s. I really only like the stuff that came out before everything went techno. I want to hear Rick Springfield and Loverboy and Quarterflash and the J Giles Band. And Olivia Newton-John after she got hot. Play the soundtrack from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album. What am I leaving out? Who else can name the cool music from the early 80’s?
My first boyfriend lasted for six weeks in the spring of 1982 and the experience was so disappointing I’ve been trying to erase it with a really good relationship ever since. I was fifteen and a sophomore and he was a senior. I spent the first half of my high school years never saying a word, wishing I had more friends and longing for “cool.” I spent the second half amazed that boys were paying attention to me and people seemed to like me even though I still felt like a total geek inside. I still do.
I guess my inner fifteen-year-old is still looking for a safe, yet exciting place to eat lunch. She still gazes wistfully at the popular girls and wonders if she’s really as unattractive as she feels, an almond-eyed Chicana in a Kim Basinger world. She’s certain that if she were just a few years older, she could crack the code, find her way to the INside, gain social acceptance and find romance. She waits patiently for the age of sixteen, eighteen, twenty-five or whatever age it is at which one finally knows everything one needs to know in life. She waits hopefully for that day, that wisdom. She still thinks it might be coming.
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