Too Bad I Wasn't Also Wearing a Scrunchie

Do you ever have one of those days where you're just going about your average hum-drum life, never suspecting your life is about to be altered in ways you could never suspect, and BAM!, your past comes dancing back into your life, painting everything around it with the awesomesauce that you once were?

That's exactly what happened to me on Saturday while doing a deep clean. During my diligent efforts to keep our official "dumping ground," the office, from reaching Hoarders-worthy levels of clutter, I unearthed a treasure trove of photo randomness.  In one envelope, there were about a hundred or so pictures that I had forgotten even existed.  Amongst them ... well, I'm not quite sure how to describe this tableau of my former self.  Except, that it is MORE AWESOME than one Polaroid can handle.

Brace yourselves for teenage Veronica:

KAPOW!  Jealous?  I knew you would be, yet I still feel I should honor myself by breaking down each moment of awesomeness, one-by-one. Because, honestly, look at all of the amazing contained within:

That's a lot, so let's start with the obvious:  the hair.

Spiral perm, scrunched to perfection, WITH bangs that had been curled under with my trusty curling iron.  Ugh, the layers of dried gel, mousse, and hairspray on that thing.  The SMELL when I turned it on and it began burning ... nothing like it.

The face framed by that hair?  Even better.  What is this face?  Honestly, I have a strong suspicion that this photo is staged.  

Beyond my pose on the bed ("Oh, I'm just lounging on the phone, as always!"), the tiny smirk in the corner of my mouth leads me to believe there was someone standing in the middle of my room saying, "Okay!  Pretend you're talking to someone on the phone!  One, two three!"  What possible reason would there be for me to need a picture of this?  What does it MEAN?

Next up: t-shirt.

Didn't EVERYONE wear their volleyball uniforms on a casual Saturday spent chatting on the phone?  No?  Just me?  Moving along ...


and stopping at my fancy jeans.

The wash.  The cut.  I even remember the brand -- Arizona jeans, available exclusively at JCPenney.  Hotness.

What?  You were distracted by that neon yellow phone cord?  Me too.  Let's follow it down to ...

An awesome see-through phone with neon-colored parts!!  I loved this phone so much I cannot even express it in words.

UPDATE: FINALLY found a picture of it online! Here it is in all its glory.

Perfection.

But what's that behind my head, you ask?  

Why, it's what all cool teenagers hang above their beds.  Yes, a map of the world.  With flags from every country making up the border.  


At the time, I secretly believed my mom's claim that if I slept with a textbook under my pillow, the material would seep into my brain through "osmosis." Perhaps I thought there would be a trickle-down affect.  The moral of the story?  My mom is a cruel woman.  She also told me that any sweets bought at a church bake sale were devoid of fat and calories.


Tangent over.  What else do cool teens keep close to their heads at night?

Rainbow Bright's horse, Starlite, of course.  To be fair, he is the "most magnificent horse in the universe."

That might be trumped by a GRADED ASSIGNMENT I HUNG ON MY WALL.  

I wish the quality were a little better so you could see that I had to describe a type of architecture and then make a 3-D example of it.  And then I hung it on my wall.  The shame.


And finally, what teenager's room would be complete without a copy of the junior high's logo, trimmed from a sporting event roster? ...

... and a picture of a white cat ...

... which used to be a page in a calendar ... from 1985.

If only I could have maintained such a dangerously high level of coolness over the years.  The burden must have been too much to carry.