I dug out my old handwritten diaries from back in the day. It’s weird cuz just this week alone, I’d thought back to certain things that happened decades ago, and wondered why they happened. For example, I remembered a high school crush hanging out with bridesmaid Vicky and me at this guy Pete’s apartment our freshman year in college, and I’d wondered why he was with us since he didn’t know Pete. I also wondered whether he’d sat in the front seat or the back seat as I’m sure I drove to Pete’s house. (Pete, btw, is its own drama that became something of a triangle involving Vicky. I’d also thought about him recently. My proudest sting operation involving three-way calling and call-waiting was in exposing Pete.) In randomly flipping in this diary, I read about that exact incident. And it was way more embarrassing than I’d expected. I cringed reading it and remembered that Dwaine had said we’re programmed to forget things for our own psychological protection. To show that I am a good sport, I’m gonna let you guys in on what a spazz I used to be back in the day. Some background; the crush and I were insanely close at that time, we’d talk for hours on end on a nightly basis. Vicky had met him a couple of times through me, but as far as I knew they barely qualified as acquaintances. Usually they did not say kind things about each other to me.

“…After this, Vicky and I went to Burger King. Sitting there, I got a page from [crush], ‘hi-sis’. I was all excited, then I thought, ‘What’d he MEAN, “sis”?!’ Then I got sad. Immediately after Vicky’s pager went off. [Crush] paged her ‘miss-you.’ I got really upset. She later went to a pay phone and called him. I threw an attitude and refused to talk to him tho he kept asking for me. I just stood and watched Vicky flirt w/him. I was really sad, yet I stubbornly refused to talk to him. She said [to him as a suggestion that] he could page me w/a buncha’ sorries, but I turned off my pager on the spot. And he never knew why I was upset @ him.”

The next day:
“This afternoon @ 12:48p, [crush] paged me, ‘5748801217.’ Then @ 12:56p, ‘1-177155-400.’ [I miss you] I couldn’t figure out what the 1st one was, so when I got it (@ 1:30 or so cuz I was at L.A. Fitness w/o my pager), I called and asked what it said. He said it said ‘stubborn.’ That was dating back to yesterday when I refused to talk to him. I kinda gave him the cold shoulder in the 3 mins I talked. He said he didn’t go to church today (yesterday Vicky tried to get him to go out w/us today, and he kept saying he has church till 3,no promises, he’ll ‘try’ to call, page, etc.) I called him back later and told him to come over. He kept asking why, I said no reason. He wouldn’t believe me, saying I always have a reason for everything, and I said I just wanted to see him. He came over. We sat around as I finished the last of my packing, and Vicky talked to Pete on the phone. [Crush] said he was gonna bring me a pic, but forgot it @ home. After awhile, we all went down to Pete’s apartment in Pomona and kicked it there for like 2 1/2, 3 hrs. At first, [crush] seemed kinda bored, but he loosened up and told some of his adventurous stories & everyone loved him (except Vicky, who flirts w/him in person but disses him behind his back). Then when we parted, he gave me a hug in front of Pete (Pete looked really surprised) and went to his car. My mom said to leave for LA today @ 5-6p, and we were giving Henry a ride, so I told him that, too. But since I didn’t want to leave (leave [crush], perhaps), I didn’t say anything and we didn’t leave Pete’s till 6p. [Crush] had an engagement too, he was supposed to take some Vivian Choe [a popular Chinese singer at the time] look-alike out for ice cream, and @ first, he kept looking @ his pager for time, and he sat, then stood, then sat, and didn’t leave either till she paged him again. Pete asked if he wanted to use the phone to call her, and he said ‘No, it’s all right.’ Heehee. Anyway, @ 7:32p, I was in the car on the way to LA, and I got this page: ‘44177-177155-400-999.’ I couldn’t read it, and Henry read it. It’s ‘will miss you-[crush].’ Then when I started writing this entry, he paged ‘Ring me’ @ 10:10p. I happily obliged and we talked till now, about 1 hour…”

This entire diary is scandalous with the different guys I gushed about on every page. And the way I behaved around these guys!!! I do remember the incident described in the diary entry above, and some years later I’d gotten back in touch with then-crush, and we’d caught up on people we knew in common, and then Vicky’s name came up. He said, “That girl never liked me. Hmmph.” But I had TOTALLY forgotten that APPARENTLY, they were FRIENDLY and it appears, even PAGED each other little affectionate pages! I should call him now and demand what the hell had been going on between him and Vicky.

But that’d be the old Cindy.