80s Adolescent Angst: Na na na na, hey hey hey, GOODBYE! (The final Russ entry)

Why blog the 80s?

Due to not-so-popular yet compelling demand, I'm blogging my high school diary entries from the late eighties and early nineties.

You are more likely to enjoy this blog if:
- You were born between 1970 and 1976.
- You thought George Michael would fall in love with you if he only got to know you.
- Your Aquanet consumption easily exceeded one fushia aerosol can per month.
- You penned at least one angsty poem per week about your latest crush.
- You assiduously nursed all legitimate bouts of melancholia into sustained periods of truly impressive despair. When you consulted your journals weeks after writing about each episode, you moved yourself to tears.

I'm not sorry to transcribe the last of the Russell saga. Not one bit. To celebrate THE END, I'm including a fun schematic, courtesy of Mikare Night, Inc.:

Yes, this is a baptismal font in the Seattle Temple, drawn to scale.* It is very important to note the location of the stick people. Also, be sure to admire how thorough it is...stairs, shoe and cloak room, men's lockers, counters...

Apparently, seating charts are the coin of the realm when you are 14 and boy crazy: "Will that special someone sit by me? If he sits by me, will he talk to me? If not, will some other, remotely attractive boy sit by me so I can flirt with him in hopes of making Mr. Special jealous?"

All while in the temple. Yup. That Mikare Night is a class act!

Diary Entry: July 20, 1989

We went to the temple today. When we got there, Tina said Russ kept staring at me and stuff. I caught his eye once or twice. Then we got down to the baptismal font and we had like a 45 minute wait.

Anyways, I was sitting in a chair in this long row (cue schematic, above) and Russ came and sat diagonal from me. We start talking. He keeps playing with my feet and touching my hand. He's such a flirt!

So we ate dinner together and spent practically the whole day together. Believe me, it was a laugh a minute!

That night he came over, but he mostly talked to Tina and stuff but we talked a little bit. I wanted to tell him I like him, but I chickened out.

That was the last time I ever saw Russ.

I decided that night, after going to the temple, that I had to go home and stay there and work things out with my family.

So Saturday we came home. Tina went to her Dad's and I went out with Renee and Kristy to Lakefair. And I finally went on the barf up rides for the first time!

This has been a summer of new experiences...

*When Mormons refer to doing "baptisms for the dead" in the temple, we're talking about acting as proxy for those (often loved ones) who have passed away. For example, I could take my deceased grandmother's name to the temple and go through the baptismal ordinance on her behalf. Nope, no dead bodies involved.

Because we believe in life after death, we believe that the person I've been baptized for can then choose to accept the baptism. It is always a choice.