Posts for category ‘nostalgia’

I went to see American Teen on Friday, a documentary following a bunch of high school seniors in Warsaw, Indiana. I was a leeeetle worried during the first five minutes, because there was this scripted voiceover and then a couple of shots that were obviously set-ups and felt very Laguna Beach-y, but then it loosened up and felt more genuinely documentaryish. It confirmed what I (and a lot of YA authors) always say: the experience of being in high school doesn’t ever really change. It could be 1984, it could be 2006, but the fundamental issues are the same.

 It should be reassuring for those of us who write about teens and sometimes wonder if we could be out of touch. Every single teen followed in the movie had a storyline that could have been the plot of a classic YA novel: the offbeat girl who may or may not be in love with a jock and just wants to get out of town, the queen bee who gets bit in the ass by hubris and has her own sad secret, the sports star whose hangs on coming through in a high-pressure game, the loner guy who thinks all his problems will be solved if he can find true love. All those things that can sound overdone and cliche are happing in the daily lives of real teenagers, and they will continue to happen, and that is why YA books will still connect year after year.

(Across cultures, too! I just found out that the Korean rights for both my books have sold, so look for them in your Seoul book shop in 12-24 months.)

The high school experience never really goes away. I spent two hours on the phone this afternoon catching up with a friend who had gone to my twenty-year reunion. I heard some great stories about how people were doing well, and some funny stories that could have easily taken place in the great halls of T.N. in 1987. Then I spent some quality time with my yearbooks and wished again that I could have made it to the reunion. You have to kind of laugh at who you were, and who the other people were, and the crazy ways we could hurt each other without realizing it. Or at least, without realizing the lasting impact. I did some not-so-nice things myself, it’s true. Most regretful of all, my senior quote in the last yearbook is tremendously dorky. I thanked the teachers. I said they didn’t get enough credit for all they “do for us.” Thus I am immortalized as being the lamest suck-up of all time. But then I married someone who became a teacher, so at least I’m consistent.

Enjoy your long weekend, if you’ve got one. I spent today in my PJ’s, revising and avoiding the late summer heat wave. Tonight, a storm is supposed to come in and cool everything down 30 degrees. Permanently, I hope.

EspressivoOn Thursday, I read Emily Wing Smith’s forthcoming debut novel, The Way He Lived. You know how in As Good As It Gets there’s that scene in which Helen Hunt is trying to get Jack Nicholson to pay her an actual compliment, and after several really lame attempts he finally says, “You make me want to be a better man”? Well, reading Emily’s book makes me want to be a better writer. I quickly got over my artistic jealousy and wrote a blurb, that you can see here. If you’re going to any of the big conferences coming up, look for an ARC and snap it up.

Grave

When I brought to the rummage sale the small box of records G. had pulled to donate, I found these:

Ack! Just give away my childhood, why don’t you! (He thought they were his. No excuse.) Fortunately, I snatched them from the hands of death just in time.

Allegro

The Dierks Bentley show was fun. Some of my fears did come to pass: a group of young people next to us basically binge-drank all night, and by the time the second warmup (Bucky Covington) was done, one guy had already puked at his feet, one seat away from me. (I know. Sorry.) Soon after Dierks started, another from the group couldn’t stand up and his friends were alternatively propping him up and trying to get him to stay seated. We moved to some empty seats nearby and then I flagged a security guy who was walking by and not long after that, the guys were removed.

I’m not trying to kill anyone’s fun or anything, but when your friends Read more »

For those if you in sunny AZ (okay, just the Phoenix/Tempe area), I will be in your neighborhood this week. If you happen to be home at 11:30-ish a.m. tomorrow, I’ll be on Good Morning Arizona on KTVK TV-3. (Of course by then you will have already seen my friend Tammy on The Today Show talking about her 105-lb weight loss!)

Tomorrow night the 11th, I’ll be doing a teen writing workshop (for teens) at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe at 5 p.m. and a reading and signing there at 7 p.m. Details here.

Tuesday the 12th you can catch me at Barnes & Noble, 21001 Tatum Blvd in Phoenix, 7 p.m.

Wednesday I’ll be back home and at the Sugarhouse Barnes & Noble, which is the coolest B&N in the valley – 7 p.m.

And then on Thursday, you can celebrate Valentine’s Day by listening to me on BlogTalkRadio with Mr. Media! And, you can call in with your burning questions. I will remind you about this closer to Thursday, but for now you can go to the site and set it up to remind you and the call-in number is right there as well.

Friday I will sleep.

In other news, we saw There Will Be Blood yesterday. Fortunately, there wasn’t that much blood. If you don’t know, the movie is based on an Upton Sinclair novel, Oil! Sinclair’s The Jungle was one of my favorite “assigned readings” in high school, though the last 30 pages or so fell apart for me as Sinclair was working harder at making a point than telling a story. Apparently, the same thing happens in Oil!because the last 15 minutes of the movie felt like that, too. However, Paul Thomas Anderson is indeed brilliant, and G. and I always find ourselves having days-long conversations after seeing his movies. The movie felt a little Flannery O’Connor-esque, too, with charlatans and family secrets and battles of will and personal demons. (Fortunately, for most of There Will Be Blood I understood more or less what was going on. I can’t say the same for the O’Connor novel, Wise Blood, that this reminded me of.) Daniel Day-Lewis is truly mesmerizing in the movie and I will not be at all surprised if he wins the Oscar.

Last, I’ll leave you with these pictures from the SF trip – the first is of Mark and me in front of our old grade school (which has an all-new building). The second is me thuggin’ in front of the old corner store near the school. We basically went in there and told the guy that we grew up in the neighborhood and that I stole candy from the store. Sorry! He didn’t seem all that surprised. (And by the way, if you’re looking for a mint condition VHS of Slimnastics you can find it there.)

In church today, the Old Testament reading was from Psalm 107. I leaned over to G. and reminded him that was the passage we read at my father’s little memorial service. It wasn’t a funeral, because he was cremated, and it wasn’t really a memorial service because my sister and husband and I were the only ones there who knew him, but it was something. And it was something we needed, and friends came to support. Anyway, when I whispered that to G. he whispered back that it was two years ago. And that didn’t seem right. Two years? Only two? But he’s right – it was Thanksgiving 2005. That seems like a different lifetime. I was still at my job at FPC and my book hadn’t come out yet and G. hadn’t started grad school and I just can’t believe how much has happened in the last two years.

And it seems like a favorite family of ours just moved back after doing school in Scotland and now they are leaving again. We said goodbye today. They cried. We cried. Lots of hugging. Sigh. Now I have three more reasons to go to Seattle.

Not that long ago my friend E. and I went for a walk and she told me she was pregnant and I couldn’t say anything forever and now she’s due, like, tomorrow.

In other news, my wonderful agent had this made to surprise me and it arrived yesterday morning: 

Sticker. Shiny.

My friend L. Madigan asked me some questions recently. One thing she wanted to know was the make and model of my first car. Which made me nostalgic, because I loved. LOVED. My first car. I got it in 1987 and it looked almost exactly like this:

Except it was yellow, rusting, and a bit more banged up. I always drove around with a gallon of water because it would regularly overheat but I couldn’t afford to fix the radiator, so I just kept adding water. Even for 20-minute drives. For those of you too young to remember Datsun, they became (or were acquired by?) Nissan. My Datsun eventually had to go to car heaven. I learned how to drive manual transmission in this car.

My next car was a 1975 Toyota Celica. This was a great car, too. It was silver. Like this:

I’m pretty sure it was solid metal through and through—no fiberglass to be found—and I haven’t felt as safe in a car since. It had a rebuilt engine when I got it from my future sister-in-law and, like most Toyotas, was very reliable. Ultimately I believe it, too, went the way of the scrap heap. But I had it for a good stretch there. Maybe 1988 or 89 to 93 or 94? It was an automatic.

Next, we bought a 1987 Honda Accord from some friends. G. was still driving his 81 Corolla, so the Accord was “my” car for awhile. It was your basic four-door sedan, and felt very long and grown up for me. Perhaps too grown up. The headlights had a way of getting stuck on “high beam” which kind of annoyed me and all the drivers around me. When G.’s Corolla died, I handed over the keys to the accord and bought myself one of these:

But honestly, I turned out not to be so much of a VW person. (This was later confirmed by the world’s worst Passat.) Something about the sound of that put-put-put engine and the smell all old Beetles have and the feeling like you’re hurtling through space and might fly off the planet…I don’t know. I sold it within a few months. The good thing about classic bugs is that you can always find a buyer.

Since I loved the Celica so much, my next car was another one, a 1984 liftback:

It looked a lot like this except it was silver and black and had the little louvre thingies on the hatchback window. It was manual transmission and the last car I had in San Francisco. Probably it could have run forever, but living by the beach caused it to rust pretty badly near the end and it didn’t make sense to bring it to Utah. I ended up selling it for a few hundred bucks to the teen daughter of a friend. I still miss it. It’s a perfect fit for someone 5’2″.

Once in Utah, the only car we’ve had that I consider “my” car is the Escort. (This isn’t ours, nor is the carport or forest, but close enough…)

When we got it, it was as a second car for getting around town. I don’t think we ever thought it would last as long as it has. Now it’s our primary car, which might be kind of sad for two professional adults, but hey, whatever works. When this one meets its end, I’d like to go back to a Toyota. Maybe a Matrix. Or maybe we’ll just get a couple of skateboards…