Robert’s Original Blog, Part IV

In light of the fact that it is supposedly Valentine’s Day, we’ll enter the last in this brief series of entries from young Robert’s journal. The last entry found him finishing up 9th grade, though you wouldn’t know it from any of his entries since there was only one entry from the 9th grade school year. This last series is kind of appropriate for Valentine’s Day, as the bulk of the entries are about his latest “love” interest and how he failed miserably at convincing her to like him. This will be the first time that some things get edited, primarily because this is a PG-rated blog most of the time and I wrote some mildly inappropriate things as a 15 year old. All these entries take place between July 15, 1996 and August 1, 1996. Not a lot of real substance beyond the first entry, but we’ll put it in anyway. I apologize in advance for how stupid this will probably sound to all of you.

July 15, 1996 – I’m not very good at this journal thing. I try to do it every day but it just doesn’t work. Halfway through summer. I am so bored! If only Anastasia had said yes, maybe we’d be going out and I’d have something to do.* When Jeff gets back from Jon’s house, maybe I’ll have him call her to see if she likes me.** I haven’t given up hope on her but things aren’t looking too good. I have pictured me and Anastasia going out all the way through high school and getting married a couple of years after graduation.*** I’ve been a little down since she said no, but it’s passing. I’m thinking about waking up early one of these days to go chalk her driveway, proclaiming my love.**** That’d be cool! If she does like me, it’d be so cool. I’d call her everyday just to hear her voice. I’d do it now, but I don’t want her to hate me before she really gets to know me.***** I want her to like me so bad. It would be so cool to go out with her. Kissing her. Making out. Oh baby!****** As soon as I can drive, it’ll be way better. As soon as I come into some money, I’m going to send her some roses. A dozen red roses. That’ll be cool.@ Anyways, about Anastasia. She’s gotta nice smile, a nice body,@@ a good sense of humor, she’s smart, (here I wrote something terribly inappropriate even now, so we’ll just pretend I didn’t write anything or that I can’t read it or something) Well, I’m going to try to get some sleep now. Goodnight.

*I’m assuming this means I asked her “out,” though the details are sketchy at this point, seeing as how I didn’t write anything during the school year. Had I done so, I’m sure it would have been about the Puppy Dog Mafia we formed in geometry class or other random things that happened. Or something about post-advancement shenanigans after we “graduated” from 9th grade. Would sure be nice to have some record of the first half of this summer.
**Because that sounds like the way a real man does it!
***Hopeless romantic even then it appears…
****Yet another potential winning move had it occurred. Doubt it would have worked if I did it.
*****I don’t really seem all that complicated at this point in my life though. What’s there to hate… or like for that matter?
******It may go without saying at this point, but I had done neither one of these things up to this point in my life. I just crushed on girls but was extremely shy once I started to become a teenager. In second grade it was easy to walk home holding a girl’s hand because it was all a game. Eight years later, however, there were different rules and I was an awkward and somewhat goofy looking kid. I didn’t get real good looking until high school, but lacked the practice needed to get anywhere with the opposite sex. To this day, this continues, and I’ll readily admit, and have previously on this blog, that I am intimidated by attractive women. It is what it is.
@Got sick of so many asterisks. Apparently everything was cool to me at the age of 15.
@@Number two on the list so I wasn’t totally shallow back then.

July 16, 1996 – Two days in a row. Wow! Anyways, nothing much happened today. Thought about Anastasia a little bit today. Played volleyball and basketball at the church. That’s all.
July 17, 1996 – I am helping my dad build a storage shed. That’s about all I did today. Thought about Anastasia a little. Goodnight.
July 18, 1996 – Helped my dad some more. That’s about it.
July 19, 1996 – Didn’t help my dad as much today. Thought about Anastasia a lot.* I was seeing what her married name would be if she married me. That’s all.
July 20, 1996 – Not much happened today.
July 21, 1996 – Not much happened today either. Tyson’s coming over tomorrow at 1:00. It’s pretty cool. Well, goodnight.**
July 23, 1996 – Tyson left for Moab this morning. Won’t be back for a month. Brandon leaving for Arizona tomorrow. Jeff’s not back from Jon’s yet. That’s all.***
July 25, 1996 – Not much happened today. Boring day. That’s all.
July 28, 1996 – Thought about Anastasia today. First time in a while.**** That’s about all that happened. That’s all.
July 31, 1996 – As July comes to an end and August comes upon us, there is about one month until school. Not much happened today. Jeff is going to be at Jon’s the rest of the summer. Oh well. It was boring with him here and it will be boring without him here. Goodnight.
August 1, 1996 – On the first day of August, not much happened. All I can say is that summer sucks and I can’t wait to get back in school. That’s all.

*Had to make up for not thinking about her the previous day apparently.
**Three straight days of no Anastasia thoughts. Imagine that.
***All my friends left me. So sad 😦
****Nine days to be exact, at least in journal days.

That’s all in more ways than one. That was the last entry in my childhood journal. I wish I was able to share more teenage things with you, especially some of the feelings and thoughts and crushes when I first arrived at Hunter High School. But I, and you as an extension, will be deprived of those memories. It’s really too bad. I would imagine if we had the internet 15 years ago like we do today, all this fun stuff would be posted on the interweb for posterity. Unfortunately, everything else from my youth from this point on are just fading memories. It’s not the end of the world for sure, but I am sure that there are things that would be nice to remember that will probably eventually fade as I continue to get older. If I have children some day, I will have a hard time recalling the small details from high school, but as long as I can remember the big stuff it will all be okay.

I’ll end this little series with “Robert Lee Eberhard’s Goals,” a quick little list of benchmarks that teenage Robert wrote down sometime around the time of this journal; when, I can’t exactly say. It is slightly interesting and semi-vague, but still indicates what I thought I wanted out of life back then.

• Graduate High School in 1999 (Success!!)
• Graduate College in 2003 (off by two years)
• Married in 2004 (again, off by two years)
• Live in Anchorage, AK (nope)
• Travel the world in 2004 (didn’t happen)
• First child in 2005 (making babies while traveling around the world… didn’t happen) – Tshimanga Biakabutuka or Shoshona Lynn (yikes!)
• Second child in 2007 (fail) – Bhutrus-Bhutrus or Rebecca (wow)
• Third child in 2009 (strike three) – Christopher Bruce or Anna Christine (strangely normal)
• Buy Hummer in 2031(can still happen!)
• Compose, teach, or play music as a career (could still happen but I doubt it)
• Move to New Orleans in 2029 (where I will buy a Hummer to avoid floods or something)
• Travel the world again in 2035
• Keep in touch with friends and relatives and children
• Retire in 2040
• Die in 2060 (apparently I thought it was a bad idea to write this so I crossed it out. Whose goals include their death?)

Until next time…