My writing partner Laura (HI LAURA) has been using her old journals and diaries for writing prompts, which in theory would be a great idea for me to do as well, had I not shredded and thrown out all of mine from my childhood and teen years. It’s probably for the best, honestly. No one needs to remind themselves of such misery. Even though I think of the years between fifth and ninth grade as being the absolute low point of my life, Laura convinced me to look back at my old yearbooks, in lieu of my long-lost diaries, and to write about a moment in time, 1988.

The yearbooks have a page in the back for students to fill out, things like Favourite Subject, and Best Friends, and also – weirdly – “Most Gorgeous Guy” and “Best Looking Girl”. Did the purveyors of the yearbook really think that we needed to know who were “The Jock” and “The Jockette” in the years to come? I guess they did. In any case, it was an enlightening journey, going back 36 years, to one of the least-joyful years of my life.

• I don’t know what you were doing in 1988, but I was finishing seventh and starting eighth grade. The junior high years are universally miserable, aren’t they, but I feel they were particularly so in the 80s, and even more so for girls. Age thirteen is a tricky age to be in any case, what with the angst and the complete lack of self-esteem and the desperation to fit in and belong; there are friend crises and romantic crises and clothing crises, and everything in the world seems like it is just poised to constantly thwart you and break your spirit. And as if the generalized agony and misery of seventh and eighth grade were not enough to destroy a girl’s soul, the styles in 1988 finished them off. I am going to make a bold statement right now: no one, but no one, looked good in 1988. There was just no chance. If it wasn’t bad enough to have acne made worse with the use of St Ives Apricot Scrub followed by Sea Breeze astringent, hairstyles that surrounded our poor little scoured faces were insane. Who decided that spiral perms with bangs teased to be vertical were a good idea? This is when we were made aware of the diminishing ozone layer, so we all traded in our aerosol hairsprays for pumps, which we used to make our hair into literal walls. When gravity started to take its inevitable toll on those bangs, we rallied by holding them straight up and spraying them until they dried into a solid form. Why did we do that? What were we thinking? Who came up with this ubiquitous hairstyle?

• I’m not going to say that fashion was worse than the hairstyles – what could be worse than vertical bangs? – but it was pretty bad: loose-fitting jeans that were rolled or pinned at the ankles, which is generally an unflattering silhouette, gigantic tees that were tucked into those jeans, and Keds or their knock-offs, with no socks, which necessitated a toxic amount of baby powder sprinkled inside to keep the feet relatively odour-free. In my school, there was one type of denim that was acceptable, and one type only: Levi’s, with the red tab. Wearing an orange tab would result in incessant teasing, and wearing literally any other kind of jean would make a person a social pariah. At my school, there was no room for variety.

• I loved – and still love – all kinds of music, and I would make mix tapes from the radio, so that every song would be slightly cut off or have the radio station’s jingle or the DJ’s voice fading in or out. My favourite band from that time was INXS, and that was also the first concert I ever went to. Following that, I had concert fever and would go to see any band, at any time. Those were very inexpensive endeavours; I think most concert tickets were under $20, and I was a pretty in-demand babysitter at the time, albeit one who made $2.50 an hour, and so the money that I didn’t spend on hairspray and Cover Girl makeup went towards concerts. 1988 was also the year I got into Depeche Mode and retro music like The Beatles and The Doors.

• When it comes to non-music pop culture, I was glad to have my yearbooks to remind me of my favourites. According to them, my favourite movies in 1988 were Heathers, which, if I thought about it, I could have guessed, and Rain Man, which I absolutely would not. Rain Man, really? Who knew? When it came to television, I loved The Wonder Years – also, if I thought hard enough I could have remembered that, I’d probably still enjoy it today – and Head of the Class. Gun to my head, I would have never come up with Head of the Class. All I remember, mostly, is that the teacher was the guy who was Johnny Fever on WKRP, and Robin Givens, who was married to Mike Tyson, was a student. Oh, wait, you guys, I just googled it and apparently Dan Schneider, the gross abusive pedophile (allegedly), was also on that show. You are dead to me, Head of the Class. Not that I remembered you prior to this exercise, but still. Dead. To me.

• In 1988, the whole city had Olympic Fever – the whole city, it seemed, except for me. If there is anything more contrarian and eye-rolly than a thirteen-year-old girl, I don’t know what it is, but I was So Sick of Anything To Do With The Olympics, MOM. I mean, the most prestigious international athletic event taking place in your own city, who cares, am I right? I did enjoy the figure skating, though, and was able to take in an event to see Canada’s sweetheart, Elizabeth Manley, and also the battle between Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas, the latter of whom had a shockingly terrible life, post-Olympics. She was a fabulous skater, though, and that was also the year of the Battle of the Brians, and of Gordeeva and Grinkov. But other than the figure skating, I could not have cared less about the Olympics, and was extremely salty at being forced to watch speed skating practices as a school field trip. I was also annoyed at the joy of the city-wide celebration when the Flames won the Stanley Cup the following year; It’s Just Hockey, WHO CARES (sorry, Darren, if you’re reading this, I’ve grown since then, and also, HI DARREN). Ah, it’s hard to be thirteen. Everyone is irritated with your attitude, and truth be told, YOU are irritated with your own attitude. My strange contrarian attitude towards anything that brought happiness to the city makes my listed “Ambition” even weirder: I wrote that I wanted to be a mayor. Not THE mayor. A mayor. I do not remember ever being interested in the least in municipal politics; maybe I just wanted to keep out all sporting events from the city (or town, I guess) I ruled over? Who can say. I do find it strange that I didn’t list my ambition as being Prime Minister, or even a Member of the Legislative Assembly; I stopped at “a mayor.” I’m generally a Go Big or Go Home kind of gal, so this is puzzling, to say the least.

This little trip down memory lane was fun, but it has left me with more questions than answers. For a much less weird foray into the past, don’t forget to check out, and subscribe to, Laura’s Substack – she’s a gorgeous writer with beautiful art and thought-provoking essays, plus prompts for writing and journalling. I hope you all have a great weekend, perhaps one thinking of your own 1988, or your thirteen-year-old self, or maybe even your hopes and dreams of one day becoming the mayor of a random municipality. xo