12-Year-Old Brandon’s Journal — Entry 9 — 10/13/1992

Dear Journal,

Tomorrow my parents leave for Florida. I am missing a half of a day of school tomorrow to see my parents off on the plane. Two whole weeks without my parents. I am only in school for three and a half days this week. Two half days on Thursday and Friday because of parent to teacher conferences. This in band I got a nine and a half out of ten on a playing test. Which was the best in the class. We have sections flutes, clarinets, saxaphones, trombones and trumpets. I am a trumpet. Even though there is only four trumpets I am still first chair, that means I am the best trumpet. All the other trumpets got sevens and seven and a half. Today is a great day so far.

Hot damn what a day! Of course, my math is off. If there are half days on Thursday and Friday, I'd be going to school for 4 days total.

And I remember getting that score in band. I was super excited. But that excitement changed later on because of fear. When you were first chair, people would challenge you, and I didn't want to deal with that. This is where my laziness would really start to show its ugly face. I was content being toward the bottle if it meant I didn't have to put forth too much effort.

This is also the first journal entry I used cursive. The rest of the entries are in cursive and it eventually gets to a very slanted style of writing. I'm curious if the sound and tone of the entries change with the style.