Hello, Dear Diary

Today is September 10th, 1963. It is a Tuesday and summer ended exactly one week ago which is when I became a student at an ex-perimental parochial school.

St. Abacus is the first Catholic high school in the New York Archdiocese to go co-ed. Therefore, the nickname of the school is “the Firsts,” and all of us students have to have a pretty good bowl of noodles in our heads. I consider myself a pretty smart chick and having lots of boys in the classroom can add a lot of spice to that bowl of noodles.

Consider me a pretty smart chick who likes “slanguage,” which is the first vocabulary word I learned as a First. It was in Sister “Margarine” Mary’s Religion class. That is an example of slanguage and the teacher is one of our favorites. There are only ninth-graders at our school this year so we are all going to be upper classmen for four years.

How Boss!

At St. Abacus High School, we have to study serious subjects like politics and that is OK by me because I’m good at Social Studies and we get to look at lots of pictures of our President, John Kennedy, who is hotter that Elvis. JFK talks with an accent that sounds like you can hear his hips shaking. President Kennedy is also Catholic so what could be nicer?

Abacus is the Irish saint who invented the rosary beads and my name is Tina Manicotti and you are my diary.

SEPTEMBER 11, 1963

After school, Rita Conners, my semi-best friend, and I walked to the bus stop with a boy named Eddie Sabanese, whom we already knew from Cresthaven Country Club and from grammar school. Eddie was carrying our school bags but he was ragging on me about a religion test:

My answer to the question Is God Everywhere? was NO because if He was, we shouldn’t have to wait twenty minutes for the bus.

If God were everywhere, He would be inside the head of the Q76 bus driver and make him drive his bus better and quicker.

(The Q stands for Queens where we all live and go to school. Queens is a borough of New York. We live in Whitestone, where Cresthaven Country Club is. St. Abacus is six miles away in Flushing. Both towns are more than three hundred years old and have plaques and plazas commemorating the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. But I cannot think about history when I am telling you about a thing called a boy.)

Eddie said that my God-is-not-everywhere answer was “blasphemous” and, after putting all the school bags on the bus stop bench, he gave me the middle finger, the Bronx cheer.

I gave it right back to him.

Rita curled up on the bench and used the school bags as a pillow. Eddie gave me the finger again and said “Even I can be God!” and started making out with Rita and it knocked my school bag to the ground but it’s OK because she is, like I said, my semi-best friend.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER TWELVE

The next day when we walk to the bus stop, a cute blue-eyed boy named Timmie is carrying my bag and Eddie is acting strange but he is no longer giving me the finger or imitating God. He is not carrying Rita’s bag because she was absent today. Our bus stop is three blocks from St. Abacus. Most of the students use the bus stops right in front of the school but they are much too noisy for us. And besides, I like walking, especially when a boy carries my school books. I’m gonna like St. Abacus even if we have to wait twenty minutes for the bus.

Today, “we” be Tina the me and a pair of he. Now that’s slanguage.

Timmy, who is carrying my school books, tells me he has to say something important and whispers in my ear “Eddie likes you.”

And then Eddie apologizes and says “Tina, I’m sorry I gave you the finger yesterday...No I’m not. I’m just sorry I didn’t give you my finger in a more personal way.”

“Don’t play God with me, Eddie Boy. My kisses don’t come that easy and keep your fingers in your pockets!” I liked the way Timmy whispered in my ear but I wish he would keep Eddie out of it.

^