This is a follow up to my previous post and hopefully this entry will be part of a series. We can call the series “Stuff I Found In My Closet” or “Scary Stuff I Found In My Closet” or perhaps, “Proof That I Have Always Been Mentally Unstable”. You choose. Or pick a new one. We’ll vote on the most appropriate. Anyway. I haven’t yet come across any of the major suicidal poems, so you’ll have to deal with this other stuff for now.

I suppose technically my last post was Part One in this series, thanks to the picture of my “RENT” collage. Part Two will now commence–it is a compilation of writing from my youth. Please. Enjoy. Spelling and grammar have NOT been corrected but surprisingly, there aren’t many errors. Well. No. Not surprisingly. There are tons of fragments. Still. Like. Um. This blog? I guess I still don’t have any writing skills…either that or I have always been RIDICULOUSLY SMART. (AND CRAZY!)

Excerpt from an essay entitled “My Cousins”, dated 4/26/1996:

“My two cousins and I do a lot of things together. I know all of their likes and dislikes and their personalities. You can learn very much about people who you see often. Thomas is really funny and loud. Actually the loudest person I know. It is so hysterical when he sings and performs because he dances around while he sings and performs these really weird hand motions. I think it is great that he likes acting because it lets him display his talents. Christine is loud too but is always yelling at Thomas to shut up.”

Ah. Family. Laura, you are so eloquent. I particularly love the run-on sentence about Thomas performing and singing and performing. Beautiful. Moving on.

Excerpt from a packet of information labeled “BODIES AND BOUNDARIES: A Young Woman’s Conference on Sexuality - June 18-19, 1999.” I did not write this but thought that it was a crime to hide such vital information from you all:

“THE MAIN REASON TEENS BEGIN HAVING SEX IS PEER PRESSURE. THE BIGGEST NIGHT FOR OTHERWISE CELIBATE YOUNG PEOPLE TO BEGIN HAVING SEX IS PROM NIGHT. Statistics show that more young people lose their virginity on prom night than on any other night of the year.

Factoids:
1. Germs are not on vacation on prom night
2. There are no force fields around eggs on prom night. Sperm are not immobile on prom night.
3. Alcohol does not kill germs or render sperm harmless on prom night or any other night.
4. Excitement or nerves does not make impregnation impossible on prom night.”

Um. I think this is very important information, don’t you? My favorite part about it is the use of the term “germs”. I’m assuming that these people are talking about STD’s, that makes sense. But the phrasing throws the whole thing off. When they use the word “germs” when talking about sex, it kind of feels like they’re warning you that should you have premarital sex, PARTICULARLY ON PROM NIGHT, you will get something bad, very bad and dangerous…like strep throat. Which, I mean, is totally possible.

Sidenote: In this packet, there is also a sheet of paper entitled “The Ten Commandments of Dating” as well as a Pledge to Purity, which I was supposed to sign in order to ensure that I would stay physically pure before marriage. For some reason, I NEVER SIGNED THE PLEDGE TO PURITY. Seriously! It’s blank! Apparently, even in 1999, I was a slut. But you know, come to think of it, I wasn’t. At all. I had just begin to date in 1999 because I was a total loser. Either way, I never signed a Pledge to Purity which means I am totally off the hook for tongue kissing all these years. Now, I’m sure we know, we can get germs on prom night and we can DEFINITELY get germs from tongue kissing but I DO IT ANYWAY. HA! Blasphemer!

From my 9th grade English portfolio Introduction Page entitled “Me, Myself And I”:

“I consider myself to be an independent individual striving to stay alive in the tortured world of adolescence.”

and then,

“I love spaghetti, rain, Will Chase, singing and “Mary Poppins”.

Ah, Laura. You sound so very tortured. Such a hard world it is in which you live, the world where you gaily twirl spaghetti around on a fork, watch the rain and have crushes on Broadway understudies. ‘Tis a very tortured, tortured world.

From a 9th grade poem entitled “Frozen Heat”. Apparently, I just sat around with my Thesaurus and tried to find different words for hot and cold:

“It feels so hot today that I am cold.
Freezing with heat and shivering with warmth.
It is snowing fire.
The icicles burst into flames.”

Had enough? No? You like this poem? Apparently, so did I. Let’s keep going! I really bring it home for the final stanza:

“I am scorched with a memory I shall always remember.
Nightmare after nightmare, I am blistered with frostbite.
The torment will never end, misery such as I suffer with.
The night where the heat froze and the cold burned.”

I think we can all give this poem a collective grade of WTF?

In closing, I’m going to do something daring: actually admit that I wrote the following poem. As in, the words came out of my very own mind, onto a piece of paper. I’m already burning with embarrassment but come on, this is my blog, it is up to me to find ways to amuse you by humiliating myself. I leave you this poem, in full. It is from the mind of a tortured 7th grader who obviously had many issues with our legal system. My rhymes? ARE AMAZING.

“Him” by Laura, September 13, 1995

In a noisy, noisy courtroom
Sits a lonely, lonely man.
He is tired, oh so tired.
So that he can barely stand.

Does no one give him pity?
Does no one feel his shame?
But him, the accused,
Seems like the only one to blame.

But killed with the dagger,
Her blood oh so brightly red.
But what is going on
Inside HIS lonely head?

Does no one grieve for him?
Him who looks so old.
No, we grieve, not for him
But for the dead, Nicole.

But oh! Don’t cry.
Her blood still red as crimson.
Does no one feel sorrow
For poor, poor OJ Simpson?