Vignette Intro

Between 1989 and 1992 (when I was 15-18 yo) I wrote a lot about what was going on in my life. I dug this up the weekend of November 9, 2019 and read through it all, from beginning to end. The first seventh of it was handwritten, the last six sevenths had been typed and then printed. Altogether it probably comes to about 100 pages.

Sometimes I think that even if I were to go back to that time I still would not behave differently, even given what I have learned since then. I went to an all boys private Catholic high school (Loyola), and while I had a very positive high school experience and do not regret at all having gone there, it did mean, at least for me, that I came to have a really low self confidence when it came to meeting or talking to girls (a rare exception). I seemed to sometimes do okay when I was in my group of friends at the time, and those friends would bring girls into our mix as we did things, but often I didn't do so well. I could always provide a comedic remark or response as I had a reasonably quick wit, but get me to have a meaningful (or any) conversation was a daunting task. This still mostly holds true today - here’s one and another of a few blog posts where I talk about how conversational ease comes to some.
It may be due to this though I never got a proper evaluation to know for certain.

For the next eight Saturdays I'm going to share what happened based on what I wrote back then, perhaps even taking excerpts. I'll also talk about what at the time I was thinking/feeling, and then answer the question if Mobile Devices would have helped, and if so, how it could have helped. I talk about the idea of mobile devices because I could see myself, even as a shy mid-teenager, being able to text a girl where actually talking to her would have been too frightening; I've always been better with the written word.

With perhaps as many as zero visible readers and just as many lurkers I even still debated if I should use the girls' actual names. I hope that nothing I say about any of them will be in any way hurtful or a break of privacy. On the one hand, if no one is reading this, what difference does it make? On the other, what if one of the girls from 1989-92 that I write about comes across this now, 30 years later (or later since I hope this blog keeps going...)- would I want them to know the 'episode' is about her and I, or would I want to hide it. I've decided that if, as unlikely as it is, that one of them were to read their own 'episode', I would want them to have an idea as to what was going on with me during that time, so their actual first names are provided.

Finally, before we get to the first one; I stopped writing my journal at just about the same time I started at University. I was working at UPS and studying full time, so my social life drew mostly to a close - I did not keep in touch with any of the people who are in these episodes - once I left CEGEP, I left them too. I see this as a failure, now, that I didn't try to keep up, but at the time I had done the same thing when I went from elementary school to high school - I hardly kept in touch with any of my elementary school classmates.
The UPS job I had paid for my education, at the cost of having a very limited social life.

Here is the first episode.