The First Day of Year 2000
1-1-00
Nothing happened about the Y2K bug last night. We watched the ball* fall in N.Y. on T.V. It was cool, flashing for the last 10 second countdown. People say, ‘wait until the banks open!’ and they may be right, but nobody wants to think about it. Our lights didn’t go out or anything.
We had planned to pop a balloon every hour from noon to midnight, but we have some left, so we’re planning to pop one at 12:00 (noon) to signify our surviving 12 hours in the new millenium.
We went to the P__’s and popped 2 balloons there. A__ (my opposite in practically everything) got me on the phone with M__, her friend. We (M___ and I) have more in common than I thought. More than A___ and I do, anyway. She was cleaning her room while she talked and found some surprising stuff, like a comic book from 1986 and a poem she wrote to Banana Top when she liked him. He never saw it and refused to read it to us. She tore it up, and I wanted to see it!
We went to the P__t’s next. Norma was my Star Sponsor last year. She’s fun and so is talking to Vicky, her daughter. Vicky is like me; shy, homeschooled, a good kid, and only partly like a typical teenager.
After dinner, we went in A___’s church’s New Years party, which was at their pastor’s house.
…
Everybody in that church hugs everybody else. Mom and I are ‘sweety’ I’m ‘so pretty’ and poor Elijah is a prized baby doll.
* in N.Y. they had a big ‘disco’ ball with lights in it falling slowly until midnight
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B-side:
Hahaha. Okay, so all my parentheticals and explanations of things kind of crack me up. Also, who knows why I am using a British mode of quotes in a lot of things. I didn’t tag my dialogue this way.
Actually, what’s weird is to realize I still do that in my journaling, 13 years later. !_!
Now. ELIJAH.
I somehow managed to kind of glide over a kind of major point here, in an earlier spot, saying “Ben was supposed to be the last, but then came Elijah!”
Which. is only relatively true.
True Facts: My mom had difficult pregnancies with Becky and Benjy, Powell Kids #3 and #4. When my parents sat us down to discuss Major News my dad said,
“Well kids, we have something to tell you… mom’s having another baby!”
“Jeffrey!” exclaimed my mom. “Don’t even say that!”
Instead, he told us he was considering taking a job in Japan. I guess that kind of eased us into it?
Some time later, (close to my birthday in May) my parents had to sit us down to have that announcement, after all.
My mom was 40, I was 13. Elijah was born in August, and moved to Japan when he was only 4 months old.
The photo at the top of this post is him the next April, eating soba noodles. He’s always had an Asian taste in food, which is
frustrating to my mother now we live in the US and don’t buy the same groceries...
