Personal Essay: Reflection On Old Journals

Blast From The Past: Childhood Journal Edition

By Gretchen Gales
@GGalesQuailBell
​QuailBellMagazine.com 

*Editor's Note: This piece is one in a small series that will examine childhood diaries and journals. See Archita Mittra's piece on her old entries here. 

Oh boy. Welcome to Gretchen’s Blast from the Past: Journal Edition. I’ll be reading, sharing, and reflecting on old entries from primarily elementary and middle school. I was in many ways a different person in my youth (hair was longer, my physical appearance reflected my dorky interior, take your pick), but it’s cool to see how I can still recognize who I was and am. Vague description, yes, but I can’t spoil the content.
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Most of the journals in my younger years had dogs and cats on them because I had (and still have) an obsession for animals. I wanted to be a vet for a while, but that’s another pitiful story for later. Transcriptions will be edited for correct spelling and because my handwriting was (and admittedly still is) atrocious. Enjoy!

Transcription: 
Date: 3/22/2005
Man! It was embarrassing last Friday. It's like I was carefully standing on the cart and this old lady came by and said to be careful and  Mom could have heard it! Because I'm not her granddaughter! 

Words on the doodle:
Old Woman: Careful! Or you might fall young lady!

Reflection:
I now understand that the old woman was right and I should not stand on carts. 

Transcription:
Date:  3/23/2005
Commercials That Are So Lame!
The Geico ones without the Gecko.  

Reflection:
I've now opened my mind to other Geico commercials. 
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Transcription:
Longest Book I've Ever Read: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Reflection:
I couldn't draw. Still can't draw. Also, that honor has now been given to the Holy Bible, or whenever I get around to finishing Les Misérables. 
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Reflection: 
​When I really wanted to finish up an old journal I'd sticks a plethora of stickers on the pages. Apparently I got so desperate I even stuck the remnants from a used sticker sheet onto the pages. Now I typically put movie ticket stubs, business cards of other writers and artists, newspaper articles I like, and other things that I think are worthy of my journals on the pages. So I guess I do the same attempt at a collage now, but with more taste and less laziness...maybe.
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Anyways, many of my journals (both from the past and now) also have prayers or notes from personal Bible study as well. Like now, I wrote my prayers down, because otherwise I accidentally fall asleep while praying nightly prayers. 

Transcription:
The Most Embarrassing Moments I've Had
-The Reading Group thing
-I accidently thought in karate that a boy was a girl and said good luck ma'am (and he was [an] orange belt). He beat me bad.

Reflection: 
I don't actually remember what the "Reading Group Thing" was, so it wasn't as embarrassing as I made it out to be. As for the karate thing, I didn't get "beat bad" physically. I meant my pride. But now it's hilarious so who cares?  

Transcription:
I have decided to not date until I'm 20, because I'm afraid I will become a teen mother I can't HANDLE THAT! Why did Jamie Lynn [Spears] have to get pregnant and have to cancel Zoey 101....I thought she was different from Brittany [Spears] her older sister...

Reflection:
Ah yes. Jamie Lynn Spears. Like many of my peers, I adored Zoey 101, a Nickelodeon show about a girl that attend a private school and has cool adventures blah blah blah. As for the "teen mother" thing, I doubt I understood how pregnancy worked at that point. I started seriously dating at 18, and I think little me would be happy with my unimpressive dating life. I also did not become a teen mother, so I reached that goal. 

Transcription:
This Diary Belong To: Gretchen Gales
No eyes besides mine may enter if anyone else reads this without my permission I will be really mad and probably not talk to you for a while.
Book #2. 7th Grade. 

Reflection:
You all have permission, so I'll probably still talk to you. I've always been someone that can can overly nice, so that's probably why I didn't make a very impressive threat to those treading upon my personal property. 
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Transcription:
I said, "Fine with me. I don't mind." [Mean Girl 1]looked at me funny. Did she think that she could shut me up? You can't shut me up when I know something isn't right! 

​I wanted to say something else, but I didn't know what else to say that would get to the [point].

Reflection:
​Okay, not going to lie, I'm quite proud of little 7th grade me. 7th grade lunch period sucked for me. I sat with an acquaintance and her friends. I never told her, but her friends treated me like garbage. They demanded I buy them snacks (I'd always refuse), or make passive-aggressive rude comments towards me.  This particular incident I'm talking about was one day when the counselor introduced the table to a new girl in school and wanted us to be welcoming towards her. I was all for it, but they just kept saying nasty things about her for no reason.
When the shy new girl got up from her seat to go to the bathroom, they grabbed her lunch bag and passed it around to each other, none of them wanting to accept her. That was my tipping point with them. I tried insisting they be nice to her because she was shy and trying to fit it, but they weren't impressed by my pleas. They said something along the lines of "Well why don't you let her sit near you?" This page is my response to them. 

Years later, I feel pride that I did the right thing instead of contributing to an already rough situation for a new student. Eventually I got so sick of the mean girls I moved to another table to eat my lunch by myself. It was a lot more peaceful for the rest of the year, and I was sometimes able to sneak over to the other side f the cafeteria where my actual friends were sitting. Don't ask how my middle school lunch schedule worked because it made no sense. As for the mean girls, I have no idea what became of them other than one of them asked me years later in high school if I was related to Gretchen Wilson. She was dead serious. 

But there you have it, a buffet of my old journal entries. It's a very small slice out of my childhood, but I hope it proves that being  dorky kid delivers pretty good results down the road. 

#Real #PersonalEssay #JournalReflection #Diaries #Childhood #Transcriptions 

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