Recall first post: My Diary 1977

For January 1977: go to Snippets from my 1977 Diary Part 1 January (age 14)

For March 1977 go to: Snippets from my 1977 Diary Part 3, March

My Diary, 1977  SÖDERTÄLJE– translated from Swedish, word for word, unabridged, sic, ad nauseum

February 1

I am sitting at school again.  We were at Västergård Gymnasiet yesterday.  I was very nervous on the way there.  I met Catharina there.  She was just as nervous.  It is the world’s largest school.  I don’t now how I will find my way around.  We went up one staircase, and there was a door labeled A123.  Then you go down another staircase and up the same staircase you went up before, and now the door is labeled B123!  How  will I find my way there?  Chemistry and physics seems so hard.  I wonder if I will make this.  I am going to look at Anders’ textbooks and see how they are.  I don’t want to take another major, but I wish there was more art classes and things like that.  In the four-year technical major, you get to do masonry and woodwork in the first year.

No one has said anything about my new jeans.  I have gotten new ones.  Wings.  They look tight, but they aren’t.

Maud and I were at the Royal Opera Ballet on Saturday.  They did four dances.  Flower fest in something… Meeting Death…   Beyond the Ages… Othello.  Nils Åke Häggbom was there.  Svalberg sat in the row behind us.  We bought a really nice poster for 10 kronor.  Guess who we met there?  Lillemor [my ballet teacher]!  She just said hi and nothing more.  She is rather dry after all.

At school, we had sex education.  I don’t have any experience.  People talk about their experience and we watch films on techniques.  When we first moved here, I overheard girls talking about the p-pill.  I thought they meant penicillin.

Eva S. is so depressing.  Mikael A. is so silly around her and she wants to break up with him but doesn’t know how she will tell him.  I overheard her telling Aija that during Art class.  It’s all so dumb.  Maybe one shouldn’t ever have a boyfriend.

I walked home with Catharina and Christer R.  I wish he would talk to me.  I feel so dumb and so dry.  Me, in my silly hat.  I really think it’s comfortable but I don’t know what they think at school.  But you know what?  He offered me some of his pop!  Maybe not very romantic.  I guess he was just being polite.  But still. I said no thanks.  Maybe that was wrong.  I should maybe have said yes.  I don’t know, and today he borrowed my pen.  But he probably likes Catharina instead.  Catharina said that she drank wine last Saturday and was dizzy.  I will never taste a single drop!  I wonder what it looks like when a guy or a girl from my class is drunk?

I probably saw the worst thing ever today.  A girl in my school, who is not very tough and does not have tight jeans and who reminds me of Thomas H., smokes!  I don’t understand how people can smoke.

I got my Balletakademien sweatshirt.  It’s really gorgeous.  Red with white lettering.

February 6

I am going to wear my sweatshirt in the morning.  Then everyone will know that I dance ballet.  Imagine the teachers.  I have also bought pointe shoe protectors and now it won’t be so loud when I jump and stuff.

I have mini skis now.  They are really hard to control but really fun.  Sometimes they fall off and it is really hard to climb up the hill with them.

I have a little contact with Carina at ballet now.  I just wish I wouldn’t be so flushed when I dance.  I was going to ask Lillemor today about the audition, but she had a class right afterwards, and luckily so- for I would never have dared.

I have filled in my choices for courses for Biological Sciences.  French and German, first choice.  French and Spanish, second choice.

We might move to Portland, Oregon next year.  I have to sleep now.

February 10

I am in the school library.  We’ve had an hour of French and have one more hour to go.  I have such a stomachache because I didn’t eat any lunch.  I wanted to study French.  It’s boring reading French.

Music is a very unnecessary course.  We don’t learn anything.  She tells us it is not a lesson.  Then she doesn’t tell us what we are supposed to do.  I feel sorry for her.  She is old and has a crooked mouth.

I try not to be prejudice against [middle Eastern] men.  But… they surround me on the train, smelling of beer and teasing me.  I end up curled up in a corner.

I dreamt that Maud and I were going to Germany and I had only packed pajamas.  I called mom and she came with clothes.

Yesterday we finished early and I wanted to go home early to drop off my schoolbooks and then go to ballet.  I also needed to go to the bathroom.  Mom forgot to put out the key.  So Fredrik had to sit outside and wait.

Lillemor is driving me crazy.  All we hear- Karin, Carina, Charlotte…  She doesn’t pay any attention to the rest of us.  It gets tiring, and you don’t know if you are making mistakes or doing it correctly.  Anna and Katarina want to be in our show.  We are going to ask Marie too.  It’s starting to get serious.  Maud says we can rent a theatre in Huddinge.  We want to show our dances to middle schools.  My pen is running out.

February 11

Diary, I hardly ever have time to write in you- just when I have some time at school.  Now I have a whole half hour to write and I am in the mood.  I may perm my hair.  I hope it works. And I would pin it back behind my ears.  Sometimes my hair looks terrible. My hat looks like a big egg.  Yesterday I walked home from school and didn’t touch my hat just to see what it would look like if I left it alone.  I thought it would look good but my heavens!  The hat had ridden up so it stuck straight up and you could see my ears.  Blah!  I feel like everybody is looking at me at the bus stop and commenting on my ugly hat.  Now I am going to perm my hair, and cut my bangs, and Mom is going to buy me a flowered scarf to have a round my head.

Mom has bought herself a leather jacket (black).  It is really nice and fits her perfectly.  It is definitely her style.  She wants me to buy a gabardine coat and I certainly want to.

I have created a dance about a troll but I don’t know what kind of costume I should wear.  This new pen is much better.  Not so messy.

I am going to sleep over at Maud’s this weekend.  But not tonight.  It will be great to be back at the barre this afternoon.  We have the whole weekend free.  I love ballet.  It doesn’t matter too much that Lillemor doesn’t pay attention but sometimes I get grumpy about it.  Now that my pointe shoes have a protective toe cover, I hardly make a sound when I leap.  I wonder if we will have a whole lesson en pointe soon.  Do you think I could be a ballerina?  My dream is to go to the Opera Ballet.  Live close, yet on the countryside.  Have a dog that I take for long walks (Milton, of course) and not do anything other than dance, paint and take care of the dog.  Mom wants me to be a doctor.  I am interested in the human body but I don’t think I could do the various subjects needed.  I find chemistry and math so difficult.

There is a girl in Järna who has come down with polio.  The family refuses to get vaccines.  I wonder why?  Poor girl.  I hope she doesn’t get paralyzed or dies.

Maud, Marie and I walk around Central Station and yelled at everyone who walked by in fur coats- Animal Killer!  Gjidborg has a fur coat and I think it is so creepy.  Poor animals.  And idiot humans!  Idiots!  Leave them alone!

The cold weather has come back and we skate during PE.  We have to wear stupid helmets.  Fredrik laughed when I told him we wear hockey helmets.  Girls in hockey helmets!  HA HA HA!  I agree with him.  We look stupid.  And me with my hat.

I told you earlier that we might move to Portland.  Dad is going on a business trip soon to check out the job in Portland and to go on holiday in Vancouver for a week.  He doesn’t think he could get a job in Vancouver.  If we move I would buy new jeans and clogs.

Delbrook School in North Vancouver has burnt down.  All the students have to go to Balmoral now.

February 12

I asked Lillemor about the audition.  She actually said she would keep her eye out for the age requirements for scholarships.  This could mean something.  At the lesson yesterday, she asked me to demonstrate fondue- all of a sudden.  Maybe this means she will pay more attention to me.  Gissi got mad at Lillemor and left the class and slammed the door.  I wonder if she will come back.

I want to move.

February 14

Yesterday, I didn’t have time to write.  I was going to put my hair up but it looks all right anyways.  I’ll do it tomorrow instead.

The mouth ulcer is so painful and I am so tired and I feel nauseous.  I am staying home from ballet today and will go to the nurse.

I want to perm my hair.  I have to wait until Mom gets her paycheck.  Lassie was on TV yesterday.  It was good.  It’s only about dogs.  I told myself not to cry but I did it anyway.  It hurt so much.  I know it’s only a film but the tears came anyway.  (Thomas H. just sat down on the bench next to me).

I feel so sorry for Milton, being home all day by himself.  When I come home I will take him for a walk, play with him, brush him and wash him.  He needs a trim.  I’ll write more after I have been to the nurse.

I am home now.  Mom ordered time at the medical clinic.  The nurse put some purple stuff on the ulcer.  It stung!

Lena is talking to me a lot.  We sit at the same bench.  But when we stand at the bus stop it’s like we don’t know each other.

Milton was happy to see me.

February 24

Maud writes:

Hi Katarina, I have to write a few lines, even if I could just call.  When you told me you may be moving, I became very sad.  Even if it sounds dumb, I cried when I got home.  It just came out, until finally there was a big lake on the floor.  I have never had a better friend in my life.  You probably think I am very silly now, but enough about that.  I hope we will be together during spring break. 

Blah, blah, I hope Karin and Karina are not in our group.  They just think they are something because they have gone to the Opera Ballet School.  I hope you don’t become that way when you get in.  Because you will get in.