My journal from 1987

I moved to Vancouver in August of 1986 and my first job was working at Expo 86. Five months later I began keeping a journal (I never called it a diary — the book has no lock so any ol’ person could leaf through it freely and I’m pretty sure a few certain people have). I diligently wrote in it every day, even on days when I had nothing to say. It seemed important at the time.

From time to time I’m going to post entries from way back when, to look back on what kind of bright-eyed idealistic dummy I was at the age of 22.

A snippet to start, from January 22, 1987:

Will someone put arsenic in Mariette Hartley’s Celestial Seasonings Herbal Tea…PLEASE!! After viewing her in that commercial only twice (during 20/20) I am ready to throw any number of blunt objects at the TV in the vague hope that through some weird freak of science, said objects will suddenly materialize before Ms Hartley and knock her front teeth out, thus cutting her grating, perky cute quotient down from two hundred trillion to something intolerably unbearable (which would be an improvement).

Such anger — although I think I nailed her perkiness fairly accurately. I was also gauche enough back then to use two exclamation points. Never again!

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