A Songful Reminder (or Driving Music of the 90s)

Tip of the Day: Check out Winter Escapes for free and cheap YA fantasy ebooks as well as other giveaways!

There are certain songs that will come on the radio that immediately take me back to middle or high school. Usually it's because these songs:

1. were in heavy rotation on 90.5 WBER when I first started driving and listened to the radio all the time in the car, or

2. were one-hit wonders on WBER in my early driving years so that is the only association I make with those songs, or

3. were in heavy rotation on 98PXY during middle school when that was the "safe" station for the school bus driver to play.

So, do you all remember:

A. "Wonderwall" by Oasis (my gym teacher would sing this, making a whiny vocal even worse)

B. Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" (I was a fan of the Eurythmics' original, and when this version debuted, my emo high school self couldn't get enough)

C. The Rentals' "Friends of P" (never a true fan, but always seemed to be playing in the mid-90s)

D. "Johnny Quest Thinks We're Sellouts" by Less Than Jake (the beauty of the jump-around-dance-music -- ska! -- whatever happened to this band?)

And to end with a Christmas song...

E. OK, granted I was only five when this song came out (1984), but it still reminds me of middle school (the 98PXY effect) and would be stuck in my head all day when I got off the bus in the morning for the entire month of December: Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" You gotta love Bono's passion in this epic feel good tune.

(For more amusement, also check out "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well," a The Simpons classic, circa 1992 (skip to 1:00).)

What songs take you immediately back to driving around after school?

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

A2A Teen Years: What will you be when you grow up?

Tip of the Day: With all our talk recently of e-pubbing, read this post by Lisa Schroeder about why she likes traditional publishing. In high school, my friends and I asked the Ouija Board what we would be when we "grew up." I'm pretty sure it said "NUN" for me (and it told Shaunna she'd be "GAY" and Kim she'd be a "SEX QUEEN"; not sure who was pushing the planchette for that session). Then when I started working at the library as a Page, people would call me a librarian. So maybe they could see the future more than the Ouija Board? Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

A2A Teen Years: When I Grow Up, I'm Gonna Be ... Gone

Tip of the Day: If you missed HBO's Game of Thrones last night, you missed a great show. It captured the spirit of the books amazingly well.

Here at Author2Author, we thought it might be fun to talk about what our teen friends thought we'd be when we grew up. (Or is that "if we grew up"?) Actually, I'm not sure my friends thought I'd do much of anything, nor did they really care. I'm not sure I care too much what my friends today do for a living; it's not really who they are.

What my friends and I cared about much more was WHERE we were going to be when we grew up, which was, to be exact, "the hell out of here." Some of us wanted to retire to Palm Beach at the age of 18, and many of my high school friends moved South, to never deal with snow again.

I think my friends had me pegged as a city girl, living in an overpriced studio apartment in Brooklyn or Boston. And my life almost went that way. But love changes everything, and my husband is a country guy who likes the wide open spaces. So we had to compromise.

Other friends stayed right where we grew up, and sometimes I'm jealous. It must be nice to know the people who own the stores where you shop, and their parents, and the town supervisor, and all the teachers, and most importantly, all the gossip!

But I was restless, and I think my friends saw in me that I wasn't destined to live in one place for too long. Now I've lived in Rochester for like 9 years and it seems like home. Moving around a lot is a pain; you have to get to know everything all over again. But my husband and I still talk about moving. Texas? Atlanta? North Carolina? There's so much to experience.

And that was the big question looming on the minds of most of my teen compadres, rather than what to do for a living. Should I stay or should I go?

What I would tell any teenager thinking about this is, you know, it works out either way. You're not a loser for staying near your family. Your life will be rich and full. But if you leave, you can always come back, or even go somewhere else, and you'll probably be glad you learned about another part of the country.

If all else fails, read Little Women. Beth and Meg were meant to stay home and Jo and Amy were meant to leave. Much of the second half of the book is Jo's angst about it. How would she get out? Once she had gotten out, had she cheated herself by missing Beth's company before her death? But by the end of the novel, her second guessing is over. Whether you stay or go, life works out beautifully either way.

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

A2A The Teen Years: Yearbook Yackin' (or We Were Only Freshman*)

*With apologies to the Verve Pipe

Tip of the Day: Stay tuned to future posts for intriguing gems from my sophomore through senior yearbooks!

Here's some great lines from my freshman yearbook -- feel free to steal them for your YA novels!

"You might as well face it, me & Steve's relationship is not at an end. I know in my <3 he likes me."
(UPDATE: they dated on and off for most of high school, and then thankfully it ended.)

"We are making the bestest quilts in the whole darn world!"
(UPDATE: my "quilt" maxed out at about 3 square feet.)

"It's a good thing we didn't waste our freshman year & pay attention."
(UPDATE: I still agree with this. :))

"Maching band was fun too but don't drop out...."
(UPDATE: I did the next year to get a job.)

"...and I love your hair!"
(UPDATE: I still have no idea how anyone could love my hair, especially during the puberty years.)

Reading through these was fun and embarassing! It was the first time I opened this yearbook in, well, years!

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

A2A Teen Years: Yearbook Flashbacks

Tip of the Day: March seems like a good writing month...which is why I'm officially making it March Writing Madness Month.

This week we are talking about yearbook messages. I’m having so much fun reading over old messages in my yearbook, but trying to figure out what to share on the blog has been quite challenging. I’ve figured out that a lot of people wrote general (a.k.a boring) good luck message or stuff way too specific that no third party would understand.

Also, my senior yearbook is almost empty, since we didn’t get it till everyone was in college, which made it hard to reach people to sign it. Boo…(hopefully they’ve figured out a quicker way of getting yearbooks out to graduating students now.)

But here are bits and pieces that stuck out at me from some of my older yearbooks…

“When I have a bad day I can always look forward to you having a big smile for me and about 30 hugs to go along with it. I really do enjoy your hugs, but let’s try to have them in moderation.” (For that I'm sure he got 60 in one day :)

“Remember all of our guy talks! I know you will find that really built businessman that wears suits all the time and he sings 'She doesn’t know she is beautiful!'" (Ha…my husband wouldn’t know a suit if it hit him over the head…but he does sing. 1 for 2!)

“Thank you so much for making my endurance for patience very high.” (This came from a long, long entry after I apparently made one of my best guy friends write more in my yearbook. He proceeded to give me a huge story of how he needs patience around me. Ha. The stories were funny, but too long and too specific to share. Lesson learned: let people write as much or as little as they want!)

“…which reminds me of the other time you guys really made me happy. When you ran the Taurus through my dad’s brand new landscaping. That was highly intelligent.”

“Continue to do a good job being President of the Klutz Club!” (Still the President till this day!)

“Well you’re a wonderful person and we have a lot of memories. Like when you fell down the stairs in aerobics and then fell off the bars, that was so funny!”

“Someday I’ll be calling you up and asking you to represent me in my upcoming court battle. I’ll find your name in the phone under: Emily {MAIDEN NAME}, Attorney at Law.” (Not even close…and for that I’m glad!)

Oh high school. What good times!

--Emily

A2A Teen Years: Who Were These People?!

Tip of the Day: Check out the argument on Harper Collins' decision to limit the number of times a public library can loan a copy of an e-book to a mere 26 (?!) before the library has to purchase it all over again. That's insane!

This week on Author2Author, I'm not really going back to my teen years. Looking at my senior yearbook is no time machine. My three besties never even signed it. Why would we sign each others' yearbooks? We were going to be together forever, so we'd never need a yearbook signature to remind us of each other. Duh.

But here's an inspirational writing from my English teacher, senior year, the wonderful Ms. Vahey: "I hope you continue writing so the rest of the world can get as much enjoyment as I have." Awww.

And then there's this intriguing line from a guy named Kevin: "We had some good times and some bad times but all in all we're still friends." What's intriguing about it? I went to high school with like 25 guys named Kevin. Which one was it? I have no idea! The one I found out in college was a total creep? Or the one I see on Facebook all the time but never friend? Does that mean we're not "still friends"? Grr, how did I think I was going to remember all this in the future?

Seriously, teen girls, make every guy write his last name when he signs your yearbook. I don't care how well he likes to think he knows you, I don't care that in his little brain, he daydreams that you'll remember his machismo for the rest of your life with happy sighs. Make him write that last name. Also, make your best friends sign it, even though they'll tell you you're a dork because you're all going to the beach tomorrow, so they have nothing to write other than "Bring sunscreen this time, lobster girl."

Hey, they should print that advice on yearbooks! I wonder why they don't?

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

A2A Teen Years: First time behind the wheel

Tip of the Day: The 2009 Debutantes are giving away FORTY SETS of L.K. Madigan's books (Flash Burnout and Mermaid's Mirror). Click here for details.

I will never ever ever forget the first time I got behind a wheel of a car. Or in this case, a very very large truck. It was my Dad's 1980 something Ford truck that he used for work. It was big and brown but looked a little like this one:

I had just gotten my driving permit and I was nagging my dad to take me out driving. He tossed me his truck keys and said here, just go practice in the driveway for awhile. Sounds weird but if you'd seen our place we had a really long driveway. Our property used to be a farm so there was four acres of land and my dad had poured a long concrete driveway that went to the main road. The driveway also went down to the barn--this big stone and brick building that use to be used for farming but now housed my dad's trucks, trailers, and tractors etc. for his construction business. I, of course, took his keys and raced outside to start driving.

I climbed into the driver's seat of that big truck and sat there. I knew the keys went into the ignition but I wasn't sure how to make the truck start. I saw my brother outside so I rolled down the window and yelled:

Me: Hey, how do you turn this thing on?

Him: Huh? Seriously?

Me: (eye roll). Yeah, just tell me!

Him: Turn the key clockwise.

I did and the truck started right up. Whee! Then, um, now what. So I yell out the window again.

Me: Hey, what do I do?

Him: What are you doing exactly?

Me: Shut up, Dad said I could drive in the driveway.

Him: Press the gas.

Me: Which one is the gas?

Him: Ok, get out of the truck...

Me: No!!!! Dad said I could! Just tell me where the gas is!

Him: (hesitant) Push down the one on the right.

Me: I can't reach it.

Him: Get out of the car.

Me: No, I'll just scoot all the way forward.

I press on the gas and I was off. And it was awesome! For about twenty seconds until I decided to go do a loop around the barn. And crashed right into it on my left. And kept going. The scraping must have been loud because my dad came running out. I made it back up the driveway and turned the truck off. My dad and brother started yelling at me and I gave my dad the keys while he checked the damage (the whole left side of the truck was dented in). My brother stopped me on my way back to the house.

Him: I don't understand why you didn't stop when you hit. Why did you keep going?

Me: You didn't tell me where the brake was!

Kristina, Miss Author in Action

A2A: The Teen Years (or When I Drove All Niiiight*)

*with apologies to Cyndi Lauper

Tip of the Day: If you watch GREMLINS on Blu-Ray, it's not any better than it was 25 years ago in non-high-def -- but I still groove to that theme song!

As I navigate the snowy winter weather of western NY in my Corolla, complete with studded snow tires, I am reminded of my first driving accident as a teen. Let me set the stage:

I'm a Page at the small town library where my mother also works, and at 5PM when the library closes, I wait in my car for her to close up so I can drive us both home.

*Note the hotness of my 1980s Ford Tempo.

**OK, so I borrowed this pic from http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Ford-Tempo, and my car was white with a black bottom, but you get the idea. HOT.

While waiting for Mom, I notice a small group of people standing in the middle of the parking lot sort of to the left of my car. At the same time, I get the great idea to turn my car around and pull up right next to the library door so Mom can hop right into the car. I'm a good daughter, right?

I put my car in reverse, keeping my eye on the people to make sure I don't mow them down with my vehicle....CRUNCH.

Oh wait, one of the people standing nearby had parked their TRUCK BEHIND ME? Um, ooops...guess I forgot to look there....

Mom and the owner of the truck made it to my Tempo at about the same time. And can I just say I can't remember a time I've felt like a bigger idiot? (Remind me of this if I claim to feel uber dumb in the future.)

The truck's bumper pad had a lame little scratch on it. But my Tempo lost some rear lights and gained a crinkled rear bumper. And the truck owner charged me like $80 for a new bumper. When you're making $5 an hour, man that SUCKS.

But let me tell you, I haven't backed into a vehicle since!

Ah yes, these are the perfect moments to channel in order to torture the characters in my books....

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

A2A Teen Years: My true first car

Tip of the Day: if you have a flat roof and are meaning to take care of the ice and snow, make sure to get too it sooner rather than later. Trust me!

Love it when we have A2A the Teen Years, but talking about cars is hard for me. If you asked me to pick a Corvette or a Maserati out of a picture line up, I probably wouldn't be able to. Cars have never really interested me, which is probably why I never viewed driving as a rite of passage. Being the youngest child, my siblings always drove me around and I was perfectly content being chauffeured everywhere.

But eventually I did take driver's training and luckily passed, while only managing to hit the curb a few times while driving the wonderful "Student Driver" cars. After I got my license, my mom handed down an old gray Ford Taurus to me. Since it only lasted a few months before I got into my first and only (to this day) accident, I don’t really consider that car my first car.

It was a rainy day and the roads were slick. Not being that great of a driver, I had no idea what anti-lock brakes were or the fact that my car had none. So when a newspaper delivery woman was delivering papers on the wrong side of the road, it was pretty much inevitable that I reacted too quickly, locked my brakes, and slammed into her vehicle. My car was totaled, but luckily my two friends and I weren’t badly injured.

But trying to explain the accident to the police when they showed up got tricky, especially because we were second to give our statements and the women failed to mention she was on the wrong side of the road. Instead, she tried to blame me since I was young, and said I was driving too fast.

Also, trying to get the police to understand that we were teen girls and all three sat in the front seat (as young girls tended to do when front middle seats used to be more popular back in the day) was hard. They just couldn’t understand where everyone was seated, or whey we would cram in the front seat if the entire back seat was open. We had to keep repeating it over and over.

Luckily, we must have made some sense, since the police didn’t believe the other women’s finger pointing and her company ended up paying all the damages.

As a result, I ended up getting to pick out (kind-of) a used Toyota Corolla with my insurance money. The car already had a good 120,000+ miles on it when I got it, but it still lasted about another 12 years. My husband inherited it later and we just got rid of it last year. It still ran, even though it had its issues. But it was just time for a new car, so we took it to a salvage yard so it's parts could go into other vehicles.

And I’m going to be totally dorky and admit that even not being a car person, I was really sad to say goodbye to my trusted teen car. I had to take pictures to remember the day. Here's my husband ceremonially removing the license plate for the final time. ::Wipe. Wipe::


*Note: bumper stickers and dents are all my husband's doing, not my own!

--Emily

A2A The Teen Years: What Will You Be When You Grow Up?

Tip of the Day: Don't deny the powers of the neti pot during cold and flu season!
In junior high, my friends and I played the Ouija Board all the time. One question we liked to ask was "What will we be after high school?" It told Kim she'd be a "sex queen." It told Shaunna she'd be a "nun." It told me nothing! Not that it mattered, I guess, since its predictions for my friends were completely wrong.

In high school, my friends said I was like Daria. She was a book nerd who ripped on social norms and had big hair. Uh, yup -- except unlike Daria I swear I had a sense of humor! (Photo of me is from 10th grade; I must have forgone my glasses for this snazzy pic.) Still, it was no big surprise to anyone when at age 15, I got my first job at the local library.

During this time, I wrote a lot of short fiction for English classes, and when my family got our first computer with Word Perfect, I was psyched to type type type my own social commentaries for the amusement of myself and my friends. That was when I think people first started telling me I was going to be a writer "when I grew up."

Did people say I was going to be a librarian? Despite my six-year tenure at the Parma Public Library as a Page/Processor, I'm not sure anyone did.

At least my friends who guessed were half right. And I'm glad they were!

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

My future, according to a teen

Tip of the Day: hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

From the time I was five till seventeen, I only had one career aspiration. I never dreamed of being a princess, firefighter, doctor, or even a wife and mother. Aside from the short stint around age six of wanting to work in a grocery store, because using a cash register seemed like the most exciting thing in the world, I’d always wanted to be a lawyer.

Arguing was in my blood. If my parents stance was my bedtime should be 8 pm, mine would be it should be 9 pm, and I’d have a bulleted list of reasons to support it. Mainly because I loved a good debate, even from a young age.

Plus, lawyers wore suits everyday, got to use words such as “objection” and “your honor,” and always seemed put together on television or in books. And in my mind, they lived alone in the big city, which when growing up in a small town seemed more appetizing than anything in the world.

There was only one type of law I thought of practicing: criminal. To be honest, I’m not sure I realized there were other forms of law until high school and even then they didn’t seem appealing. I loved trying to understand the human psyche and getting to the bottom of a case, so to speak. I’d always loved mystery books, and watched Perry Mason and Murder, She Wrote before crime and law shows became the norm.

It wasn’t until I was looking for colleges my senior year that I really began to think about my future and what I wanted to study. I looked at several pre-law programs and ultimately decided I’d make a horrible criminal lawyer. There’s no way on earth I could defend someone I thought was guilty or prosecute someone that might be innocent.

Ultimately after several major changes, I landed on journalism, advertising, and public relations. And I couldn’t be happier.

Ironically, I turned back to my days of Murder, She Wrote and decided to try my hand at writing after graduation and found my niche in the mystery world. From behind the scenes in making up characters and having the ending turn out exactly how I’d like. And now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I never made it to the big city to live, but travel to them frequently instead. And ultimately I married way younger than I ever imagined. But it’s funny how things work out and you end up doing exactly what you’re meant to.


--Emily, Miss Querylicious

A2A Teen Years: Back in Time and Forward Again

Tip of the Day: Forget about New Year's Resolutions this year. I'm going to choose one word for the year. I haven't quite decided what it is yet, but I'm mulling it over.

It's time for Author2Author: The Teen Years, when we mine our memories for what it was really like to be a teenager and how that impacts our writing. This week, we're talking about what you (and your friends) in your teen past thought you'd be like in the future--meaning now, the present. (Did that make sense? I feel like I should be inventing time travel appropriate verb tenses.)

It's good for me to remember that when I was 15, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up and that was OK. I didn't lose sleep over it, you know? My friends and I figured we'd probably live in Manhattan and see a lot of live music. We expected to be at Madison Square Garden when the Rangers finally won the Stanley Cup again. Those were great goals.

What I really, really secretly dreamed of was writing for the best show on television: Days of Our Lives. I was willing to make the sacrifice of leaving my friends and moving to California for this.

I actually didn't move to California, as life got complicated with college and true love and the compromises both required. Also, I was not at Madison Square Garden when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup. But teenage dreams don't need to compromise, baby.

The last thing my friends and I expected was that I would have kids. I had two younger brothers and two younger stepsisters, so I was always babysitting while my friends were off doing (what I imagined were) exciting things. The only positive in this was that I honed my craft reading this masterpiece over and over again:

I don't want to spoil the ending for you. It has a great twist.

Friends were so much more important than career goals, weren't they? How about you? What did you and your friends envision doing together as legal adults?

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

A2A The Teen Years: Not a lot of reading going on

Tip of the day: Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!!

My strongest memories of books and reading are actually the mid-grade years. I read a lot then – LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, MRS. PIGGLE WIGGLE, ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN, and many others. I think I was in fifth grade when I read FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC by V.C. Andrews. And somewhere around there I read ARE YOU THERE GOD, IT’S ME MARGARET, too.

Once I got into high school, though, the reading pretty much stopped. I was too busy having fun. Going to football games and dances. Looking at the boys. Oh, and then there was that reading for school thing, which I didn't like much. I can't even remember much of what we read, although I know we read this one:

I think one of the reasons I can’t get enough of YA novels these days is that I would have LOVED them when I was a teen. I just know I would have been a huge fangirl of Sarah Dessen and Laurie Halse Anderson if they’d been writing when I was in high school.

I wonder if I’ll ever grow up and be an adult reader? Check back in five years and we’ll see!

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

A2A The Teen Years: What I Liked to Read

Tip of the Day: I'm @TinaSpringer on Twitter. Talk to me! :-)

I've always loved to read. When I was little it all started with the Little House on the Prairie series.




















I started with one, got hooked, and then couldn't wait to get through them all. And I'm happy to say I'm passing this along. A couple of months ago I bought my 8-yr old niece a Little House book and since then she's gotten the rest of the series and is making her way through. Yay!

I guess I was always a series girl because from then on I hopped from series to series. From about age 10 to 14, I would read a book a day. I guess I had a lot of time back then.

I adored, let me repeat ADORED The Babysitter's Club.




















I can't tell you how many times I tried to start my own babysitter's club but couldn't find friends who wanted to babysit. (little interesting fact about me: I was always trying to start clubs as a kid: save the whales club, boycott grapes club, NKOTB fan club and so on.)

And then there were the Sweet Valley Twins.





















I liked them and read probably 10-15 before I dove in the Sweet Valley High series.




















I loooooooooved this series. Really. There are still like 100 SVH books sitting in a box in my garage as we speak.

And my other favorite series that no one has actually mentioned yet? The Girls of Canby Hall Series!

Come on, someone else had to love this series, right? It was all about three very different girls at a boarding school and all the messes they got into. Sigh. Good stuff.

After that I'm blanking. I'm having a hard time remembering what I read in high school I know there was V.C. Andrews like Deena mentioned yesterday but I can't remember what else I read. Besides the required reading for English class of course. Hmm-- is that a trend? I think Em mentioned this too. So did we stop reading for fun when it became work in high school? Anyone else do this?

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut

A2A The Teen Years: What I Read (or Incest, Murder, and Torture -- What More Could a Teen Ask For?)

Tip of the Day: If you tend to accidentally kill house plants, opt to grow spider plants. Those things are more indestructible than Superman after a full night's sleep!

In junior high, there was one author's work that I was obsessed with (well, more like a ghostwriter's but you get the idea): V. C. Andrews. Even her name was cool!

The first book that lured me into her world of incest, murder, torture, orphans, twins, kidnappings, mansions, evil half-sisters, and creepy grandparents was FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC.


Remember you flipped open the cover and saw a picture of the whole twisted family? I loved those pictures!

It was actually my best friend at the time, April, who introduced me to these books. I have to give credit where it's due. :)

After I saw the movie, I was off to read the entire Dollanganger family series.

That first series was just the beginning -- HEAVEN was waiting for me! MORE sadistically twisted familial tales!

Yes, my mother knew what I was reading at ages 12-13 along with my LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE series (which I also loved), but I'm not sure she knew the extent of the twistedness of the books. But even if she did, she's a good mom and would've trust us girls (my sis and I) to read them anyway (no, I have not become a murderous, rich grandmama).

The DAWN series was next for me. Looking back, how did I do it? Each series really was the same except for the color of the MCs' hair....

Fess up -- who else out there read all these books?

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

A2A The Teen Years: Teen Readers Unite!

Tip of the Day: Christine Kane's blog provides practical encouragement for artists with goals. It's one of my "must reads." This post on motivation is why: http://christinekane.com/blog/momentum-mania-how-to-get-your-groove-back-in-7-simple-steps/.

I was a big reader as a teenager. I had a lot of extracurricular activities but that didn't stop me. I was the type of girl who brought books to work and football games in case I got a chance to read a page or two. I used to bring books when I hung out at friends' houses until someone took me aside and told me it was rude. (I'm still internally debating the merits of that etiquette tip.)

What did I read? My rule was I read pretty much everything that my mother didn't.

My mother reads a lot. She used to take me to the public library with her every two weeks. No matter how we were getting along, that was a trip I never turned down. When I was in high school, she was into gothic historical romances, books with ladies on high cliffs or possibly moors on the cover, the wind whipping about their Georgian dresses, Rebecca-like stares of panic frozen on their innocent white faces. (You can see I put a lot of thought into giving my mother a hard time about this.)

My friends and I were into Stephen King. I loved reading the same books my friends read, debating which Stephen King book was best, making stupid Pet Cemetary jokes and watching all the cheesy movies with them. SciFi reruns of Maximum Overdrive and Children of the Corn bring me back to high school faster than a time machine.

I read a lot of other books, thick ones so I could give my mother grief about her "negligent, vapid" reading choices. But then a funny thing happened. The thick books led to historical fiction, and then historical romance. By college, I was ransacking the house on my home visits for Mom's old Regency romances.

By then, she was bored with Gothic and had given the books away. She was into cosy mysteries. Cosy mysteries! Mom, you have GOT to be kidding me! Like Murder She Wrote? Ugh, I'm going to the library!

Mom moved onto more adventurous, suspenseful stuff while I moved onto sci fi and fantasy. But now I find myself craving adventure books. Sure, I wouldn't read Janet Evonovich when Mom was recommending her, but I'll try it now.

Well, guess what? She gave her Stephanie Plum books away. Now she likes paranormal romance. Way to jump on the bandwagon, Mom. Geez.

On the other hand, at this rate she should come around to Stephen King in a few years. I'll save a copy of Desperation for her, just in case.

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

A2A The Teen Years: Sophomore Saturday Nights

Tip of the day: Peeps are dangerous. Be very, very careful this weekend.

Ah, okay. Saturday nights. Sophomore year. Well, since that was the year my friends and I turned 16, this is easy. Cruising the strip is what we did Saturday nights. And NO, this wasn't the 60's.

I went to a small town high school, and the next town over had this section of town that was PERFECT for cruising. And it would get packed. We would be in stand-still traffic at 10:00 at night, with the windows rolled down and Billy Squire blaring from the speakers. And hopefully, or at least my friends hoped anyway, we'd be sitting next to a car full of cute guys.

I never drove, one of my friends, Dawn or Jodi, who had REALLY cool cars, usually drove. This is what one of theirs looked like (no, I'm not kidding):




The funny thing about this whole cruising thing is that I HATED sitting in the front seat. Because sitting in the front seat meant I might have to strike up a conversation with a car full of guys I didn’t know and that was really my least favorite part of cruising. I liked the music, I liked talking and laughing with the girls, and I liked looking at the guys. But when it came to talking to them? To pure strangers? On a road, in a car? Yeah, not so much.

Today, whenever I hear a Billy Squire song, I instantly go back to those good old days and I almost feel 16 again. No cool car. No strip to cruise. No cute guys to ogle over, except my husband, of course.

But still, almost…

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

A2A The Teen Years: Sophmore Saturday Nights

Tip of the Day: We always tell teens to not divulge too much info online but sometimes the adults need to hear it too. Don’t post things on your blog/facebook like “I’m leaving for a two-week vacation!” (As in my house is empty, feel free to look up my address online, and stop by any time!)

Saturday nights during my sophomore year…I can tell you where I was. I was up to no good! Well, sometimes I was innocent. Like during football season after a Saturday game I’d go to the band party. That’s right, I said band party—you know, the one where all the COOL kids hang out. And they were fun and well chaperoned. But on those other Saturday nights where no band function was in sight? I’d be getting in trouble with my friends.

I don’t know why we were so naughty but it seemed like we always had to find something to do that was dangerous. Generally it would start with a sleepover at someone’s house. We’d wait until that parent(s) fell asleep and then chaos would ensue. One time, I recall being in a jam-packed car cruising through town where not a single one of us had a license.

We had our most experienced newly permitted kid doing the driving so we felt extremely safe of course (and not at all stupid like we so totally were).

Another time I remember sneaking out with a friend to walk to the White Hen at midnight. Ended up we were being followed by two weirdos and had to get the White Hen manager to drive us home. Yeah, that was fun explaining to her mom let me tell you.

I could go on with my sophomore antics but quite truthfully, I’m scared. What if my mom reads my blog? I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is on this kind of thing. We did a lot of really crazy things that year. Quite the pranksters too I must say. If I ever meet you somewhere we can have a coffee and I’ll fill you in but let’s just move past sophomore Saturdays for now.

I do want to cheat (like Deena yesterday!) and tell you briefly about my freshman Fridays because they were quite unique and wholesome (like bread I tell ya). I don’t know if I mentioned this before but I was always the youngest in my class. My birthday is near Halloween so when I started freshman year I was 13 turning 14. I didn’t drive for a loooong time (second qtr junior year!). So every Friday my best friend and I would go with my dad to his bowling league.

My Dad has been bowling on Friday nights for some 35+ years. He’s the president of the bowling league in these parts actually (yep, that makes me part of the first family). And it was a BLAST. No, really. I’m not kidding. F-U-N. Here’s what you’ve got—one dad busy bowling from 6 to 10 + two thirteen year olds running amuck. (What is amuck anyway?). While my Dad bowled we’d walk up and down the street, go to various stores, go to a nearby fifties diner for green rivers and fries and just generally all around be goofy. It was so much fun and a regular thing until I was old enough to drive.

Once I was a junior with a license all heck broke out. That’s all I’m saying.

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut