Did I really write that?

I had a lovely note from my university friend Vivian that while going through boxes of stuff after recent flood damage she’d found an essay I’d written in 1979. My missive was remarkably preserved.

Vivian kindly took a snap of it and sent it along. I braced myself waiting for it to arrive in my Inbox; what would it be like going back thirty-plus years to a biography of an 18-year-old student? I’d hardly lived at that point (though that doesn’t seem to stop celebrities from penning their life stories). I immediately thought of my friend Taron who had a recent, similar experience; she found one of her diaries “equal parts funny and painful to read.” I suspected that I’d be feeling the same.

Well, I wasn’t let down; the writing was stilted, a bit pompous, and generally not very good. And (gasp) I used “a lot” a few times—without the space between two words. There were thankfully no “um”s.

Besides the overall middling quality of the writing, there were a few other surprises. When did I like puppies? At 18 I don’t think I’d ever been exposed to any. I can’t recall any relatives or friends who had a dog that made any sort of impression on me; well, there was Chuckie, the next door neighbour with his dog Spot, but I wasn’t coveting the dog; the walks with Spot were about spending time with Chuckie when we were both around age 12 (ahem, puppy love of a different sort). I did have one friend in grammar school who had a Chihuahua called Dobbs, but I found him annoying –he had a persistent, piercing yap. 

Me and Sandy, NYU graduation day

At home we did keep a neighbourhood stray called Sandy fed, and in the winters we let her in the hallway to stay warm, but she was a full-grown dog. In fact she would follow me to the bus stop  each morning and wait with me until the Number 10 arrived. It was sweet, but oddly enough whenever a driver asked me if that was my dog, I’d always say “no” in an embarrassing tone.

Apparently I also had a dislike of buses, which I find quite amusing now that I enjoy a good ride on the 341, my double decker ride here in London. When Tim and I ride the bus together we almost always head to the top for those prime seats right in front, and we’ll quickly jump up to take them when vacated if we’re initially disappointed to find them occupied. (OK, if there are kids on the bus I don’t jump as quickly.)

Thinking back to my teens I suppose I can understand why I felt that way—as youngsters we had to take the bus to grammar school and it was a 15-minute walk to the bus stop. On freezing winter mornings it was dreadful; you couldn’t predict when the bus would come and sometimes we’d be standing there for what seemed like ages before one would show. Through high school I had to take the bus in at least one direction; there was a point where my mother did drive us to school, but we always had to find our way back.

I didn’t live quite close enough to the train station to get to NYU, so the drudgery of the bus continued another four years.  Make that eight years, actually; until I left home at the age of 25 the bus was the primary mode of transport to get to the train to get to the job in New York City. And there was no such technology as exists today in London—I am ever grateful for the bus countdown online tracker,  a fantastic innovation that has changed my life. I tap my stop on my phone and see the buses approaching for the next several minutes, leaving me to sip my coffee in the comfort of our kitchen until four minutes to the mark when I stroll out the door and to the stop just around the corner on Green Lanes. I can, if need be, make it in three.

I also apparently hated liver and lima beans. Well, to be honest, I still don’t like the former; it’s a texture issue rather than a taste problem. I recall once in my life enjoying a small piece of liver at a restaurant that my friend Barbara took me to somewhere near West Orange.  I used to try it every time Robyn would order it, but never found it to my liking. I have since stopped trying, probably because I’m not spending dinners with Robyn (sad face).

I wasn’t surprised to see that I mentioned my love of the New York Yankees—my high school photograph is captioned with “Mrs Bucky Dent”. I so enjoyed going to see the Yankees play:  hopping the D train to the Bronx, sitting in the cheap seats, and actually keeping score. I wonder if they still give out scorecards and little pencils; I suspect not. I had two friends whom I would regularly go to the stadium with, and we’d get there early and wait at the players’ entrance gate to get autographs. Poor Bucky must have thought I was stalking him, considering how many times I’d ask him to sign my notebook. But he always did.

And, finally, I was apparently delighted with my life, aged 18 11/12, and was “studying to be a magazine journalist.” True, I did take a few courses on magazine writing that I really enjoyed, and fancied myself someone who could write for a living. My favourite professor,  Margo Jefferson, had previously been at Newsweek and later became a theatre critic for the New York Times. She is a brilliant teacher and I admired her for her accomplishments as well as her instruction and feedback. I Googled her and found that she still teaches, now at Columbia, and that she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1995. How fortunate I was to have access to that calibre of learning.

In the end I didn’t actively pursue that avenue. After graduation I had two job offers: one at a publishing company to be an editorial assistant and one at CBS to be a secretary, that latter I declined (perhaps in short-sightedness) for the mere thousand dollars more that the publishing company was offering. Then again, it’s been a fantastic career and I have no regrets.

I owe Vivian a big thank you for sending me a blast from my past. I suppose in another 30 years when I look back on this one I will find at least one turn of phrase that will absolutely make me cringe!