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I 'member babysitting. God, that seems ages ago (well, in fact..it was about 18 years ago when I last was a teenager with a babysitting job..I feel OLD!)...I used to like this one place cuz they always had a bottle of maraschino cherries in their frig and they'd say I could eat whatever I liked, but all I ever wanted and went for was that bottle of chemically cherries! Then I'd watch 80's videos on Nightflight (which was on USA) and Friday Night Videos and rock out to Duran Duran and stuff like that!
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Man, Nightflight was the BEST! My first exposure to many things: the Bauhaus concert video "Shadows and Light"...that wacky NYC movie "Smithereens" (The lead actress was SOOO irritating..and wasn't Richard HELL in that movie?) "Ladies and Gentlemen: The Fabulous Stains", Hazel O'Connor "Breaking Glass" The Clash "Rude Boy"....what else? It seems like I'm missing some stuff. Those are the things that stick out in my head, though.
I remember babysitting for the Kitsuns (family friends) and they had so many windows in their back living room (once they had remodeled) that when I'd be back there in the dark, watching videos..I just felt like I might be being watched..it was the creepiest feeling. I suppose every girl that has babysat late at night has had those terrible imaginings of someone getting in the house or looking in the windows (We've all seen too many horror movies!)
I remember one time at the Kitsuns I decided to call up at DJ on some local radio station (it was the "progressive/college" radio station rather than the classic rock one, I think) and I thought I was pranking the guy by asking him if he'd ever consider wearing eyeliner, but he was older than me and probably didn't really get how nervous I was trying to "prank call" him. I think I hung up on him before he even answered the question...STUPID and silly!! Like the time my cousin, Ginger and I ran around some museum in Chicago pretending we were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. We also used to eat Ruffles...go into our Keith/Mick personas and refer to them as "Druffles" (drugged potato chips) and talk in terrible British accents and pretend we were stoned on chips, though we didn't even know any stoned people, or had ever even gotten high. We probably looked more like we were pretending to be drunk (though neither of us had been drunk at that point, either)...I didn't get drunk until I was 16. I think I was in a closet drinking with a fly-boy (air force dude) at some hotel (Illini Inn)..I must have picked him up at Trito's (or was it Treno's)..the place upstairs and sort of next to Mabels..not the place in Urbana..I get those confused..it was the place right above White Hen Pantry on 6th....we could get in there when we were like 16 and the only guys in there were air force (ick!) but what did I know? I seem to remember getting drunk and then kissing the air force guy in a closet in Illini Inn but perhaps I dreamed this all...the first time I tryed to get high was with Tracita, Josh Gottheil and SOMEBODY else that I can't remember..in the upstairs office of Channing Murray...I don't think it even affected me. I took acid before I ever smoked enough pot to get "stoned" so therefore, whenever I've gotten stoned, it's always made me feel like I was right back tripping again....very hallucinogenic...that is why I don't do any of it anymore (besides it reacts weird with the anti-depressants)...High School....the worst and best years of my life all in one. College was much better in many ways.
