Dear Diary: March 3-22, 1985

March 3, 1985

I always wonder why I am always trying not to be bored on Sunday. The only exciting and interesting thing that I did was finish my science project. My new owl's name is Oho. Oho is Cree for owl. Goodbye.

Such a nerd. No problem, no hypothesis, no conclusions – my science project was simply an opportunity to flaunt my (then) knowledge of rocks. I had rocks, minerals and crystals by the dozens, largely procured at the long-defunct Avenue Jewelers & Lapidary Supplies at Portage and Arlington. Screw candy – at least for another year or so – this is the place where I spent my dimes and quarters. The place had shelves upon shelves of mineral samples, raw crystals and rock-tumbler curiosities. One memorable Christmas I got a rock hammer. I used it a handful of times in the Whiteshell, unsuccessfully trying to extract bits of mica from the Canadian Shield. Later, in my teens, I was far more adept at using it to bust up my childhood Hot Wheels.

The name for my new ookpik? Another geek-out of mine: geography. I routinely checked out a book from the library on the origins of Manitoba place names. Towns, lakes, rivers – hundreds of locales in this province came from Cree words.

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March 13, 1985

I get so suspicious at my mom when I say something. Anything. She carries the subject to work, work, work, work, WORK!!!!!!!!!! Like today. Goodbye! Good night.

The words I probably meant to use instead of 'suspicious at' were 'hesitant with'. My mom worked hard, and parented us solo. We had a good house. We were smart kids, raised right (enough) and we're all currently well-adjusted. She grew up on a farm, and on a farm you work. Everyone works. Pulling one's weight was paramount in our household, alongside "using common sense" and "not sitting around on our asses doing sweet-tweet". I don't pretend to know what triggered my diary rant on this given night, but times like this happened a lot. Sheltered as I was as the youngest child, I wasn't spared from my mom's diatribes all the time.

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March 19, 1985

Today all the snow is melting and my favourite river down the back lane is boring because it dug to the bottom. A new game "Map of Canada Game" is out now because the snow is gone and it is painted on the pavement. Goodbye! Good night.

For a brief, shining period each spring, meltwater would course through and down the ruts in our back alley, waiting to be dammed, redirected, redistributed and polluted – just like a real river! I'd don my rubber boots and get to work. It was a playground like no other, at least, to a kid capable of turning nearly any scenario into a playground. Leave it to grown-ups in their silly grown-up cars to ruin the fun whenever one dared enough to trundle down the icy lane. But like any busy beaver who's dam is dynamited, I'd immediately get back to work. It's what I do… or, what I did.

Geography geek. I think I mentioned this. I kicked ass at that Map of Canada, basically a map of the country on the Mulvey Elementary hardtop. One kid would be "it", and instruct others to get to a location of that kid's choosing on the map. The last one to reach the spot would be out of the game. I can't remember how it benefitted the kid who was it but typically, the call would be something like "Ontario!" or "The Pacific Ocean!". But I ruled Map of Canada with an iron fist. If you were a grade-schooler and didn't know Manitoulin Island or the Ungava Peninsula from your own ass, you had no place in my game.

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March 21, 1985

I have a growing pain. Nobody believes in growing pains any more. Tommorrow is the last day of school because Spring Break is here. Goodbye.

My stars, the growing pains – on some nights they destroyed me and, on fortunate/unfortunate occasion, would be nasty enough to exclude me from chores. I know my mom believed me. It pained her to watch me grimace in bed, biting my pillow, waiting for the pain in my shins to subside. I had this problem, on and off, for years.

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March 22, 1985

Today I found a marble and some limestone. I built a big dam out of gooey leaves. It worked. It was the biggest I ever seen. It worked from 4:30 to 9:00 so far! Good night!

Heh. Not bad for the last Friday of school before Spring Break.

Dear Diary: January 22-February 1, 1985

January 22, 1985

We went skiing today. It was my first time going skiing in my entire life! I liked it. It was really fun! Goodbye!

It remains really fun to this day. The sport left such an impression that not long afterward, my mom procured a single pair of used skis and boots that somehow all three of us siblings fit into, and then fought over. We used them sparingly, most memorably during the Blizzard of 1986. I then entered a great period of skiing darkness, emerging five years ago when Kerry and I bought matching skis for Christmas.

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January 25, 1985

Me and my brother Jacob or Jake went on his paper route and then we went to the North Star Theatre to see the movie 2010 "the year we make contact". Whatever "contact" means. All of my friends at school are Kien, Ken, Brian, Chad, Dwight, K.C. and Patrick. Patrick gave me a real neat rock. Nobody knows what kind of rock it is. Anyway… goodbye!

I love how I felt the need to clarify to my dimwit diary – 25 days into the calendar year – that the Jacob I keep referring to is my brother, and that he also goes by the name Jake. I love how the two of us, aged 9 and 11, could go downtown by ourselves to watch a movie – and what a movie, I recall thinking, unaware of the existence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wasn't yet old enough to grasp a whole lot of pop culture. Like when I saw Labyrinth the next year, and came away as the Number One Fan of an actor named David Bowie.

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January 26, 1985

Okla and Ija are going to get face transplants and Ija is going to get a hair due. Mouse, Mouse and Elmkah survived. Anyway, good bye.

These were the names of three of my ookpiks, small leather and rabbit-fur toys that defined my childhood. I didn't go into great detail as to what happened for good reason: it was one of the worst days of my life. I popped three ookpiks (and two plushie mice) in the microwave, pretending it was an inter-dimensional portal to their imaginary world. I programmed them for a minute on power-setting zero, believing it the equivalent of a blast of room-temperature air. Zero defaulted to full power, and in 20 to 30 seconds there was burning leather and rabbit fur. My mom wasn't home; my sister was in command, and after much yelling and tears, we agreed on a cover-up story of a terrible accident in which the ookpiks were lit by an element on the gas range. We believed this to be a much lesser charge to plead guilty to.

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January 29, 1985

Tommorrow is a very busy day. We have swimming at 9:30 to 11:30, open gym, 8:20 to 8:50, Science club 12:00 to 12:50 1:00, other kids have team handball 12:00 to 12:30 and gym, and a spelling test. Today I got Team 1's chart, I got 20 stars, Sarah and Kien got 19, Tejinder got around 16 and Brian had 4. Good bye.

I kicked ass in these performance charts. A gold star sticker was added after each aced pop spelling or math quiz, and winning resulted in a selection of our choice from a box of free books. I won so many of these books that come spring I opted for a second copy of Anne Of Green Gables to give as a present. Pity poor Brian and his meagre four stars, but ignore the irony that I misspelled "tomorrow" in my diary post about it.

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February 1, 1985

I had a terrible day. In the morning I got a stomachache. In the afternoon I stayed home because I got Jake's flu. I threw up 3 times. Good bye.

Jake, back in my bad graces. Circle of life.

Dear Diary: January 7-19, 1985

January 7, 1985

Today is the first day of school after the holidays. Jacob got mad at me. I hate Jacob, he is a inconsiderate bumb. Sorry I have to leave now. Bye!

I know Jake and I had better days in 1985; there's one near the end of January I'll expand on another time. I was an ace speller and grammar stud, but the word "bum" was a nemesis. I'm sure I was thinking along the lines of crumb, dumb and bumb. Jacob is a dumb crumb-bumb. That sort of thing. Why would bumb be different? I'd still like to argue this, but society and the dictionary have moved on.

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January 9, 1985

I scored the only goal for our soccer team. The score was 3 to 1 for the other team. They like scoring overtime, but they do it for fun. They still agree about the score. My team was very proud about me. I didn't even know I would score a goal. Anyway, I had a good day.

I'm spacing, but I believe this was Tuesday night open gym pick-up games at Mulvey School, and not during phys-ed class or recess. I was a pipsqueak – I didn't reach 100 pounds until I was thirteen – and wasn't destined for footy greatness by any stretch of the imagination. Even though I can't visualize this moment, I know how much it would have meant to me.

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January 14, 1985

I got to use the computer today. It was exciting! We used it in enrichment. We had that instead of gym.

A year later, our school had a MODEM and sometimes we were permitted to type messages to kids at other schools that had MODEMS. My friend Addison and I messaged with kids at Cecil Rhodes during one lunch hour because our teacher trusted us with the machine. We asked them if they were a BOY or a GIRL, and if they were a GIRL, if they were CUTE.

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January 15, 1985

It is Monday and sorta warm. It was boring today, so I don't have one thing to say today.

I still don't.

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January 17, 1985

I had a nice day. We got a new telephone today. It is burgundy purple. On the news a teenager was found since November 30th 1984.

Suspicious. I have a feeling my mom snuck in later and slid in that purple reference using my handwriting. She was deep into purple. Our house had purple trim, purple window frames, a purple porch. I can walk by the place even now, and some of the purple is still there. I know that phone was burgundy, skewing red. I know it. I cleaned and wiped it every Sunday.

The teenager found was Candace Derksen, found frozen and bound in a shed. Her death was a cold case for years and sadly, her story is still very much alive and in the news again this year.

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January 19, 1985

It is very very VERY late. It is 2:14 a.m. We watched two movies, 9 to 5 and a other movie. I am going to read my book now. Good night!

Friday night with sweet, confused dreams of Dolly Parton bounding through my nine-year-old head (that second movie must've been a pile of puke; I wish I remembered what it was). And this Jeope, 30 years later, is reeling at the notion his younger self needed book time to achieve sleep at 2:14 in the morning.

Dear Diary: January 1-4, 1985

When I was nine years old I got a diary in my stocking for Christmas, which I then used to half-assedly document the year 1985. A lot of it was spent chronicling the lives of my ookpiks and other plush animals, likely a case of suppressing traumatic moments in my childhood. I stuck with it for the whole year, which covered the back end of Grade 4 and the first months of Grade 5. I present to you, a curated look at This Day in Jeope, 30 years ago this week…

January 1, 1985

Dear diary: Today I read my book from page 104 to 131. My book makes me fall asleep. Brian Adams song was at 11:53 p.m. That is the song that was on when I was writing to you. Tonight I will read from page 131 to 151. Good night diary. See ya tomorrow!

I'm not positive what book I was reading; books were awarded in my Grade 4 class for acing pop quizzes. My best guess is either Underground to Canada or Anne of Green Gables. And I'm not sure which Bryan Adams song I was listening to, either. I'm hoping it was "Run To You" because damn, that song kicked ass. With the video? Of him running through the woods, finding his guitar under a pile of autumn leaves and then just laying into that solo? Come on. Kick ass.

January 2, 1985

Dear diary: It is the second day of 1985. Today was very busy. It is 11:35 p.m. We went to a movie called "Dune". We had hot dogs for dinner. It is warming up. It is minus 14°C today. Tomorrow it is minus 5°C. I will read from page 151 to 176. See ya tomorrow!

Dune was the only film I ever saw at the Met when it was a functioning movie theatre. My mom took us; she was a fan of the book, and though I felt it was just the best movie, what with those giant worms, and a greased Sting in his underwear and all, she thought it was an abomination. A year later, a friend and I snuck into The Living Daylights there and promptly got the boot. We went to the North Star to watch Adventures in Babysitting instead.

January 3, 1985

Dear diary: I almost fainted over vacuuming. I hate vacuuming. It was very warm. It is 11:51 now. I am wide awake. What should I do? Good night.

My brother and sister will tell you I never had to vacuum. I was usually tasked with wiping down the bannister and cleaning telephones and my mom's ashtrays.

January 4, 1985

Dear diary: Today was very warm. We deserve warm weather Sharon says because it had been freezing. Jacob made me feel terrible today. Sometimes I could just pound him. Bye! Good night! It's 11:41, see you tomorrow night.

Sharon is my mom's name. She preferred we called her that, until I got old enough to think it was weird – probably early in junior high or so, I'm guessing.