May 24, 1991

I just sent Keith away to the dépanneur to get me 5 chocolate bars. Yes, I know I’m a pig but what can I do about it, that’s just the way I am.

                                                  I wish I still had that metabolism, and that carefree attitude.

7 days left of school! Then the Géographie and French exams. I’m sure to get recommended for Math, I got all 90s but I just wish he would give me the recommendation. I got recommended in English. On our last poetry test I got 100%. The first one in 5 years said Miss Allain. Annabeth (nerd) Napolitano got like 55%. That’s a pretty good feeling.

                                               I went to an English high school but took “French immersion” which means half of our classes were in French, which is why I spelled Geography in French. I don’t know what this obsession with “recommendation” is about. I have no recollection of what it meant or why I cared. Interesting that I felt confident about my math scores since I have no memories of ever being good at math. I do, however, remember that poetry exam. I always hated poetry because I didn’t often understand it, so it made me feel dumb, and my self-perception at that age was wrapped up in being smart. I knew I wasn’t pretty (I was wrong) but I thought I had above-average intelligence (I was wrong about that too). I was never at the top of my class but I also never put any effort whatsoever into school work. I guess my ability to perform well without effort is what made me feel smart so any time effort was required I resented it. In any case, I’m shocked that I made fun of a classmate for being a nerd. Didn’t I think of myself as a nerd? And how petty of me to be glad she performed poorly. Teenaged me was an asshole. At least I never mocked anyone to their face.

I hope I have a daughter one day. I hope she is artistic in some way. I hope she is creative and imaginative and unmaterialistic (in short I hope she’s like me, only prettier. I mean here’s my picture. Pretty depressing, huh?)

                                            It’s like I was fishing for compliments from myself. Did I really think I was that ugly? WHY?

15-year-old-nique

I hope she’s smart too. I hope we have a good relation with each other.

This again, is not so much bad grammar as a Frenchism.

I would want her to know that she could talk to me about anything. About sex or drugs, or any problems she is having anywhere. It would be great to have a daughter I could teach and talk to and have fun with. But that will probably never happen because I’ll probably never get married or anything ’cause guys are scum. But if I did have a daughter I would give her a cool name like Bliss or Psyche or Anez-Jade or Jasmin-Kay or Aragel, not a loser name like Nicole! I would name her after a goddess or a jewel or something beautiful like that.

                                                This is sad because this yearning for a daughter was really a longing for a friend. I felt very isolated at this age. But thank god I never had a kid, because those names are awful. Anez-Jade??? Aragel??? WTF?! 

Well, talk to you later. I’m gonna eat a mint aero now!

                                               Yum.

P.S. In English class I was passing notes with Matt Topner. He was telling me he thinks his family is going bankrupt and stuff… yeah… will wonders ever cease?! Bye. NY

                                              I remember this too. I was never friends with this kid, and that didn’t change after our note-passing experience. (I guess kids today just text each other?) I suppose he reached out to me simply because I was sitting next to him. I hope everything turned out ok for him. That wasn’t the last time a boy randomly started passing notes with me. Looking back, I wonder if they were trying to tell me they liked me. I was really bad at picking up on such signals at that age. Actually I’m still bad at that sort of thing. Oh well.

Green

Green is the most abundant colour in nature, yet plants that yield green dyes are surprisingly rare. In the 19th century Victorians literally died for fashion due to green dyes made with arsenic. But can you blame them? Who wouldn’t want to rock an emerald green frock?

green-board2

Since green is the colour of nature, it is associated with growth, freshness, and fertility but also jealousy, as in being “green with envy”. Apparently this association with envy dates back to Sappho and ancient Greece with speculation that this is due to the Greeks also associating green with sickness and categorising jealousy as a type of sickness. Thanks to Americans and their boringly monochromatic money, green is also associated with wealth, though this association also makes sense if you think of wealth in terms of verdant vegetation.

green-board1

For no reason that he was ever able to explain, my younger brother has long been obsessed with the colour green. From the time he was able to dress himself, to the time his wife took over this task, he always, and exclusively wore green. As a result I’ve grown to associate green with science and intellectualism since my brother is a science nerd and physicist. And since my birthstone is the emerald, I’ve spent some time contemplating the colour in as much as it relates to me. Do I think of myself as “green” the way I think of my brother as “green”? No. But I’m green adjacent.

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Whenever I put together colour boards I scour my home for objects of the colour in question. As I was looking for green things I discovered quite a few green action figures. As a child I was very enamoured of this android looking doll, who is apparently named X-Ray Woman. She and Princess Leia were great friends who went on many adventures together throughout my backyard in the 1980s. It seems green is also the colour of monsters, aliens, and other weird things, again perhaps because green is the colour of nature and such creatures would easily be able to blend into forests and therefore more effectively jump out and scare lowly humans into submission.

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