Gems

A little bit of insight into my teen years:

"9/17/03
Hannah--
I'm not too pleased that you chose to disregard our counsel about a cell phone. If you can afford a phone, you can pay me the $175 you owe me. Love, Mom."

I'm going through all of my cards and letters that I've received since I started college and throwing them out. It's really sad, but since I probably haven't looked at letters like that since I first got them, it's probably for the best. My mom wrote me a card or letter every day for the first month of college and this note was one of them. That particular one was funny to read again because I actually felt my heart drop a little bit, like my mom was scolding me right now. I don't remember the last time my parents scolded me. I'm glad those days are over. I'm also glad that the days of being upset with your college-age daughter for wanting a cell phone are over, too.

The background on that little nugget of disapproval from my mom is that I asked my parents to add me to their cell phone plan, and they said no, so I bought a Go Phone (which doesn't require a credit card or anything). Mom should have saved her ink, because the joke was on me: Go Phones cost like $30 a month for 100 or fewer minutes, and then a dollar per extra minute or something stupid like that. I'm pretty sure that my summer job money was wasted on that phone in my first semester of college. I blame my brother-in-law Matt for not stopping me, since he was the one who took me to the AT&T store in the first place. (Okay, I BEGGED him to take me and I think that he was looking for my approval since he and my sister weren't married yet. Haha, I kid.) No matter. I graduated college a fine young woman, and that phone made me REALLY popular in the dorms. Seriously. We freshman cell phone owners were few and far between.

Here's another good one--an "I Am" poem that I wrote when I was a freshman in high school, which my mom found in a pile of my stuff at home and then sent to me:

I Am by Hannah Terrill
I am super.
I wonder why my wrist hurts so much?
I hear Rachel laughing.
I see people not worrying.
I want an A in Biology.
I am beautiful.

I pretend that I have no problems.
I feel lucky.
I touch other people's hair.
I worry when no one's around.
I cry about stupid things.
I am unique.

I don't understand people.
I say too much.
I dream of being perfect.
I try to walk away, and I stumble.
I hope to please everyone.
I am Hannah.

I think this was the product of a Young Women's activity. I can't believe how much this poem DOES NOT describe me (nor did it describe me as a 14 year-old, except for maybe the crying part), and I really can't believe that I quoted a Macy Gray song.