Woozle/Jenny/note/008

Transcript

Nov 17, 1980

Dear M.P.W.W.S.T.O.B.P.O.P.A.P.T.I.P.L.,

Do you realize that I received three (3) notes from you yesterday (wait a minute – it was today – when you read this it will be yesterday). I will have to make up or something. It's not that I have to – it's just that I feel obligated to write when someone writes me.*

*usually

We really ought to talk, the three of us. And looking in each other's eyes (I think I said that in my previous note). I don't know how much a note-writing session would help. It might help open communications. Remember Cindy's party? We will say things on paper that we won't out loud. (Don't start on the chalk board please)

I have a fear of my pen running out of ink. [scribble]

As for last year acquaintances...

I drew your picture on the bus last year. Geoffrey was sitting next to me and I told him I was drawing out of my head and that was why I was staring out the window. Actually I could see you in one of the mirrors. Why did I just tell you that? I don't know. I ought to tell you more things – but why should I.

1. last year 2. schweinehund

I remember one day¹ I was in a bad mood and was stalking around the buses calling everyone a swinehund² (pardon the misspelling) and I passed you and said accusingly, and I quote, "Woozle!" You gave me a rather odd look.

I remember when Jessica visited the school, I couldn't believe she was your sister but you were treating her so rudely I knew she must.

Remember last year at the Museum of Life & Science the book fair? That was the first time I actually met your mother face to face "Jesus I am overjoyed to meet you face to face."

My mom was congratulating you on your performance in "Rock and Roll Shoes".

I think Cindy – no, all of us are dynamite (T.N.T.) waiting for our fuse. So help me – we wait!

I sensed your obvious frustration today at lunch when Cindy got P.O.ed (no, Put Out) Have you had a talk with her in private? Recently? Can you? I mean are you mentally capable of doing so? Sometimes I'm not. I think you should talk to her alone – get a feel for what she's feeling.

Don't make jokes about you being graphic – you are. It's your precise way of thinking – sometimes like a computer! (I did not mean that as a compliment.)

I sometimes am ambiguous. Why do you always write in capital letters?

What were you talking to Mr. Goodwillie about on Friday after school?

Bye the bye – the last not you gave me was really the 30th. I forgot about the second one which was in my back pocket at the time.

Yesterday (here I go again – it was today) Today after school (A.S.) the walk home was an interesting encounter (as you would say).

My shoes got wet.

What do you have against Dickens? I am referring to when at lunch we started talking about A Tale of Two Cities.

Maybe you aren't [empty space] Whatever

Let's communicate more. (Communicate this communication to the other two commuters please)

Bye for now,

M.O.T.C.P.S.A.O.I.G.O.W.T.T.W.

Píczluvvík

Pen is better because it lasts – it doesn't rub out!

Comments

Notes (3 of them)

We both tried really hard, each in our own ways. I wrote lots of notes; she wanted us all to bond with each other. I can't speak for the others, but I know I did – with all three of them, dammit, though in retrospect I did feel closest to Jenny. At the time, I was trying to be very egalitarian, and denied that any one of them was a "favorite", because that seemed mean somehow ("playing favorites")

Bonding, though: some part of my brain still thinks of E and C as being family, albeit estranged to some degree. If either of them needed help I'd want to give it, even though we've been mostly out of touch since everything blew up. I've searched myself for anger or resentment, and I can't find anything substantial. They were friends; it's a club with a lifetime membership, on my side. (I'd call it "exclusive", but really the main reason it has so few members is that very few people want to join – and of course two of the founding members up and died on me.)

I think it kind of establishes our proto-geek credentials that one of the things we sometimes did when we were gathered together socially was to have dialogues on pieces of paper. (I don't know what happened to most of those.) I figure this was the 1980s equivalent to IMing when you're all in the same room, which is kind of classic geek behavior.

The Party

I do remember having one of those sessions at C's house, with all four of us. I don't know if the one I'm remembering was the aforementioned party. Fragments of memory which are probably that party are starting to come back, though. I remember feeling that hanging out with girl friends was very different than the hanging out with boy "friends", which had been my only substantial social experience prior to this.

With boys, you always have to be doing something, working on something, playing at something; there has to be an activity you're focused on so you don't have to interact with each other as people too much. At Mark's, we would play with his Lionel trains. At Jay's, we would read his massive collection of comic books. I can't remember much about any of the others.

This felt different. Despite the "goats and monkeys" syndrome early on, there was never quite the same sense of having to prove myself worthy; I could trust them to be supportive on some level where boys were always in a sort of competition with each other, just under the surface. It was like swimming in warm water.

I also remember having one of several dissociative experiences, and talking about them with C. I called them "unreality attacks". They weren't exactly unpleasant, just odd. I've heard dissociation described as like being outside your body and looking back at yourself, but this was more like I was watching a movie shot from my eyeball perspective.

I'm not clear on what her objection was to the chalkboard (I think this is a reference to a time when we were all in room 4 for some reason and started writing things on the board there); it might have been squeaky chalk. (This was several years before whiteboards and dry-erase markers started to be a thing.)

Last Year

Being able to see each other in mirrors is a theme that came up a couple of other times. She mentions one in a note.

I think that time when she called me "Woozle", I felt... understood, in a weird way. (She knew that name for me because our mothers were associates long before we became friends, doing minor advocacy on certain local issues – I think the naming of Academy Road was one of their collaborations)

WRITING IN PROGRESS

Note: seems very likely the Goodwillie conversation she refers to is the same one referred to here.

Scans