80s Adolescent Angst: The return of (drumroll+curtains+applause, please) Mikare Night!

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 making this stuff up, people.

Less than two weeks before I turned 15, I created a new name for myself. Not just any name. Not a cutesy-tootsy nickname. None of that for me. This was serious.

Why?

Because I thought I would soon be an actress. You have to say that word a specific way. Heavy emphasis on the "ACT" part. Like this: ACT-tress.

I'm not sure why I thought I would be an actress. I certainly wasn't doing any acting at the time. I'd had one line in one play, or something.

This is the name (and the reason I chose it). Both equally asinine, and not just a little troubling.

Did you catch that? The name, the signature, the pronunciation. And the reason?

"I like it. It sounds British."

I might just mention that I'd never been to the UK. I'd never been on an airplane. Or out of Washington. (Except to visit grandparents in Utah, which is pretty much the Mormon equivalent of a mothership. You beam there and back for food storage supplies every two years or so.)

Mikare Night, however inane, is still better than the moniker preceding it. Get ready for this, because it is deeply unsettling.

The name I first considered/coined was "Mikare Delsa Anaquees." I dreamt up that one because I thought it sounded Spanish.

Unwilling to part with either possibility, I practiced signatures for both:

Note: In case you thought you might be hallucinating, yes, the border of this page actually lists boys' names. Lest you believe I was crushing on ALL of them, I was actually thrilled to have guy friends. Writing down names was a way to pinch myself. These boys actually talked to me.

Wait. That's super creepy, right?

Just remember, we're still dealing with the legacy of the FF Poppy.

My favorite name on there? (Of course, a face doesn't come to mind). Check out the bottom right corner. Even back then, I didn't know the guy's last name, so I wrote "Nate" and then, parenthetically, so I would remember, "ski dude."

Ahhh. Ski dude. How I loved you! (I'm pretty sure I have a poem around here somewhere that actually says, "I'll see you on the slopes someday...")