Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Notebook

I am taking a bathroom break post for a minute to let you into my young-adulthood for a second.  It's a little late--I've actually had this picture in my possession for a couple weeks but am only now getting around to blog about it.
A friend from Jr. High/High School emailed me the other week and we were just chatting about random house stuff and our weird blog obsessions.  She then asked me if I ever saw the picture of our Notebook from Jr. High that she posted on Facebook.  Being the non-frequent-Facebooker that I am, I of course hadn't seen this picture.  I logged in immediately and started digging through her pictures and found this little gem:


For the readers who don't know what this "Notebook" means, or why it's such an awesome flashback for me, let me explain:  If and only if you were cool (or in our case...THOUGHT we were cool) in Jr. High, you had a Notebook with somebody.  This was kind of like the mid-to-late 90's version of texting or tweeting, but our characters weren't limited and the phrases OMG, WTF and LMAO didn't exist yet.  It was like passing notes, only cooler.  You got together one night after school or on some random Saturday and decided to "make" your notebook.  You grabbed old copies of Teen BOP or Seventeen magazine and in our case, weird Looney Tunes stickers, cut out the stuff/phrases/products you thought were cool and of course cut out letters to spell your names, raided the Scotch tape dispenser to get the laminated look, and you had your self an official "notebook".
Like I said, it was just like passing notes, but it was even better.  The notes were longer and you could disguise what you were doing in class because the teacher probably thought you were just taking really long notes in your real Math/Social Studies/English notebook.  You got your note all written in class and then you would hand the notebook off to your notebook partner when you passed them in the hallway.  The notebook was also better than folded up notes (don't get me wrong, those still happened in the funky, I-would-never-be-able-to-fold-a-piece-of-paper-like-that-today-if-I-tried kind of way) because when you read them, you didn't have to be extra-quiet when you attempted to unfold the note, you simply turned to the page in the notebook and again, pretended you were reading real, class-worthy notes!
Anyway, I had a couple of these notebooks in Jr. High.  I am not sure who has the other one, but I can't wait to get my hands on this puppy one of these days so I can read all of our precious entries from 8th grade!  Not to judge a book by it's cover, but I bet we covered some pretty sleazy topics in that notebook...let's dissect the cover, shall we??
  • Let's Talk $$$!!  ---please!  Who did we think we were??  Based on the Levi's tag, I don't think we thought we were big ballers.
  • Ask the Expert ---Yeah, I am going to ask an "expert" who has a cat (which honestly, looks like it should belong to a 5 year old), a pineapple and looney tunes stickers covering their teal notebook.
  • BAD GIRLS ---again, the cat sticker, the paw prints (which I am guessing were to symbolize the Cougars, our Jr. High mascot) and EATS, don't necessarily reflect a "bad girl" image.
  • Yo-Yo's ---not sure if that meant the toy, or if it meant that we were the Yo-Yo's...I am guessing the latter.
  • And let's not forget 1996 -- the year it all took place...oh, to be able to go back there again.  The year of the Cottage Grove Jr. High Flood Run, Science Olympiad and of course Mr. Armbrust! 

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