A Trip Down Memory Lane

Okay, I know I said I was going to be productive and "get into control" today, and I was, for a while anyway.  But then, while I was cleaning my room, I stumbled across a whole bunch of my old diaries and notebooks and couldn't resist reading them.  I spent literally two hours just flipping through the many pages of memories, and now I've decided to share them with you.

 

One of the first notebooks I picked up was this dream journal.  I recorded less than ten dreams before giving up, because, I mean, how does anyone manage to remember their dreams?  But there was this one dream from 2008 that I found so hilarious I just need to show it to you.

 

"2 nights ago I dreamt about my school having a pringle line.  They gave you a whole small pack of pringles.  I always got to the start of the line first.  My mum also packed pringles in my lunch box.  So I got 2 packs of pringles.  I can never get sick of pringles."

 

Bahahaha.  This just shows you what my 8 year old priorities were...

 

 

I also used to take notebooks on excursions and to camp, and we'd always write stuff in them during the bus ride.  Flipping through them today, I was living back some of those primary school memories.  The pages were full of drawings, hang man, truth or dares, and even a "crush" list written in code, because we didn't want people to know we knew who they were in love with.

 

 

It looks like a lot of people liked Xylophone. ;) ;)  I'm pretty sure Chair did.  In fact, I think I did too ;)

 

 

I also found two travel journals: one from when I went to America when I was 10, and another from when I went to Paris at 12.

 

In the America journal, I rated the food at Disneyland a 0/10 because it was that bad.

 

And I must say, the Paris journal was pretty cool.

 

 

It was filled with images and cool captions!!  I barely even read the actual journal.

 

 

 

I find that journals with pictures are much more visually appealing, and I enjoy looking at them a lot.  It's quite heart warming, looking at photos from the past.

 

 

This is one I found of two of my closest primary school friends and I.  We didn't want to get picked up that day, so we hid inside my igloo tent and buried ourselves in stuffed animals.  It didn't work, but my parents found it so cute that they just had to take some photos.

 

 





I also had some more random notebooks here and there, full of collected business cards, quizzes, drawings.  Here's some drawings.

 

 

I even invented a galaxy because I was a bit weird like that.

 

 

One of my notebooks was my "interview book" because I used to write a sort of newspaper for the family.  There are so many funny answers in there, but you probably wouldn't get most of them.  Here's one from my sister though.

 

"What do you think of Grandma and Grandpa?

They don't have much hair.  They're very nice"

 

Ahaha I was just cracking up at the hair comment.

 

I also had a notebook full of letters.  Every single Christmas card and Birthday card is painstakingly copied out in that book.  Here's one from my favourite primary school teachers in my last year:

 

"Dear M,

Congratulations on a fantastic year!  You are a mathematics and musical star!  Good luck at G****** next year and make sure you come and visit us when you are rich and famous"

 

 

Out of all the notebooks though, the most important by far are my diaries, which I am still writing to this day.

 

 

I skipped many months and a year or two in between, but other than that, these diaries have been going since I was 9 years old.  They were pretty badly written back then though.  Here's some excerpts.  Initials are used instead of actual names for privacy reasons, and for my own embarrassment...

 

I'm pretty sure I had a crush on this guy in 2009, but I didn't even admit it to my diary.  Anyhow, here's a story featuring DP ;)

 

"Eventually J told me.  It was about DP.  Who did he have a crush on?  N decided to ask him.  We watched her.  He answered R.  We knew he was lying."

 

Ah.  The badly written drama of afterschool care ;)  I couldn't remember any of the girls' last names...

 

For some more 2009 drama, I also found this mean girl in my group featured in many of my entries.  Here's just one story about EE...

 

"She told me that I had to listen to the teacher (that meany poop).  I was just too quick.  Then later AY made a wild guess and he was wrong.  We all said you thought wrong AY.  EE said you thought wrong M very wrong for no reason!  Mean huh!"

 

Wow.  Primary school arguments were really petty.

 

And of course, here's one featuring my lovely family friends who are still my friends today, and one of the games we played...

 

"We ran away from RM and our meeting place was the pool and the cellar.  We kept running away from him for he is the monster."

 

Skip forward 2 years and a bit, and I'm attending the testing day of the high school I go to right now.  Here's part of the entry I wrote that day...

 

"I had to wake up at 7am to get to C*** by 8am.  There were lots of people from the junior school but others were new as well.  I only knew MM, AW, IN and only sort of (hardly), AM.  We just mingled for a while before the tests."

 

Well, I certainly wasn't very good at writing down my feelings back in year 6.  It's funny thinking about the people mentioned, and my friendships or non-friendships with them now, in the present day.  I definitely know AM more than "hardly".

 

And here's a bit from my very last day of primary school...

 

"I always thought that this day would make me excited and I also thought I wouldn't cry.  But, I did.  Seeing LD's tearstained face made me burst into tears.  Everybody cried and hugged, except for some people.  I hugged GL the most.  As soon as I left the classroom I stopped.  But outside, LD and AA gave me the last hugs and I cried again."

 

 

 

And I think I'll leave the memories there.  It's 11:30pm and I should really be getting to bed before school tomorrow.  It's time to live in the present again.  It's nice to remember the good old days, but be careful not to mourn or feel as if you want to go back.  It's time to look forward.  Those days are over.

 

But here's some advice for you.  Start a diary or journal or something.  Record what you do or your feelings.  Because as you get older you're going to keep looking back at them, and they'll make you smile (or cringe).

 

Love,

M