Retroblog June 23, 1983

Today is Tursday June 23, 1983 Time 8:43 p.m.

Today my best firend Audrey Derr came from Utah with her family. What a joyous ocaccion! What fun we are having. She gave me some candy and a pin. We got to stay up to 9:30 pm. The bag she gave me the pin and candy is inculed.

The bag is still in the journal, wouldn't you know it.

I had to replicate the multicolored pen that I used for this entry. You know, one of those clicky pens where you got to change the color?

So explanations. Prior to the age of eight, I wasn't a Yankee. I was born in Utah and had all kinds of friends and family there before we "escaped to Connecticut." My world was pretty insular. Aside from two-hour trips to Grandma's house in the car, most of my life was within a few square blocks. We walked to school. We walked to church. We could walk to the grocery store. We walked to my mother's aunts' houses. We walked to friends' houses. I even walked to dance class ... alone. Granted it was the 19X0s, the time of the original oil embargo, and a simpler, more safe time, but it was still pretty insular.

When my parents announced we were moving to Connecticut, my first reaction was, and I quote from family lore, "I don't want to move there, they talk funny." (Tawlk aboud ironic!) Honestly, I didn't know WHERE Connecticut was; I didn't know how to spell it. It could have been Timbuktu for all I cared. I was 8. I didn't want to move. I didn't want to leave my friends. I was not pleased.

This entry is about a momentous trip by Audrey's family to the East Coast. It'd been about three years since the big move by this point, (pre-cell, pre-e-mail, pre-Internet), so it was a big deal that they were coming out. The house was crowded with people. I think my brothers got to sleep outside in the back in the tent. If Audrey's cute older brothers came, they were outside too, though I can't remember how many of her siblings came on the trip. I remember that we girls got to stay down in the basement where it was relatively cooler, and, as you can read, got to stay up LATE for me at that point. 9:30 p.m. I vaguely remember that there was a lot of girl talk about boys, the many life changes that are due for 10-13 year olds at that age, where we were in the midst of those changes, catching up on the news about childhood year mates, etc. And we ate a LOT of candy.

As we got older, Audrey and I inevitably lost touch. I believe that we tried to write for a while, but it must have petered out. Our lives were beginning to diverge so much, and on so many levels even beyond the basic cultural, education, and religious ones. Mom still keeps in touch with the family through our relatives still out West and they visit from time to time. I think Audrey has kids that are now older than we were in 1983.

Darnit. Now I feel OLD!