Lizzy King, Human - A Study. Box 3 Part 2

Item – Really Bad Poetry – 2003

I think it’s meant to be funny but the title of this poem is “Don’t Judge us You Stupid Hypocritical Stereotypists” and to be honest just writing that out makes me want to jump through time and strangle Teen Lizzy until it is no longer possible for me to have done so due to a paradox.

Item – Bag of Letters sent to me while at Ironbark – 2003

Hot damn there is a tonne of letters here. I honestly am not going to read them right now. I mean just look at that. How did I get so many letters in 5 weeks? I especially enjoy that the handful of the ones I did read from my mum all make jokes about my lack of response. There are lots here from family, but most are from friends. I think there’re so many because mine was one of the last classes to go so everyone else in our grade knew what it was like and how exhilarating it was to receive a letter (or 5) on mail day. Pleasant.

Item – Handwritten Story – 2003

Well it’s the start of a story. I think I may actually have a later draft still saved somewhere on my laptop. This was one of my first novel ideas. It was a love story between my 16-year-old protagonist, Matt, and a girl at his new school called Eminine. She hates her name, obviously. This is an ~interesting character trait~. It’s really not very good story writing, but it was the first time, I think, I put pen to paper and actually allowed myself to create stories. And therefore, this is one of my most treasured possessions.

I didn't choose the thug lyf etc

Photo – Sleeping small Lizzy – c. 1993 maybe?

Not sure why this is in the box, as it’s obviously from a lot earlier, but it is. It’s adorable. My parents took this photo, I think, because they wanted to document one of their favourite things about me: how I always fell asleep reading/with books on me.

Items – Collection of Birthday cards – 2003

Fifteen is a good age to be I think. My favourite card is the one on top. It’s from my family, but Charlie (aged 6) drew and wrote in it. It says inside, “Happy Birthday Lizzy. Lizzy it is your 15^th Birthday Love from Daddy Mummy Charlie BANO xo

XO bitch, XO

Some notes:

- “Bano” is Charlie’s spelling of “Banko” which was our family’s pet name for the as yet not born Sally.

- We do actually have another sibling but Charlie seems to have decided he is not a member of our family.

Oh no wait there is another card here that was most likely drawn by the 3-year-old Patrick. Perhaps the scribble is his angry, artistic response to be being left out.

P is for Patrick and Poking your brother with a stick

Items – Letters and Photos from Felix – DESTROYED in 2003.

The funny thing about having small siblings when you’re a teenager is that everyone is jealous. They want to come over and play with the babies. They offer to your mother to feed and change your siblings. They ask incessant questions about cute things they do. And hey, don’t get me wrong, I LOVED having baby siblings when I was a teenager, just as I love having pre-teen and teen siblings now as a young adult. It’s a very different experience to most people’s and is a defining feature of my idea of myself. BUT can you imagine?! You’re never sure if your friends actually like you or they just like kiddies. You want to hang out and do teen girl things and they are FUCKING OFFERING TO LOOK AFTER THE SQUIDGY THING, you get to look after her anytime you want and that means it’s not something you just offer to do.

And here’s the big thing. Kids wreck shit. My full-length mirror: SMASHED, my fancy blue jelly candle: ANNIHILATED... with a SPOON, and my favourite childhood book, Letters from Felix: RIPPED, DESTROYED and made STICKY with some sort of lolly.

These are some of the ripped out envelopes and letters from the book. Basically, a girl’s toy bunny gets lost at the airport and then goes on a world tour, sending her letters along the way. It is pretty much the most adorable thing and I was SO CAREFUL with it my whole childhood. Never lost any of the bits, never even used the stickers that were in the suitcase on the back page and then one day I discovered it RUINED by SQUIDGY CHILDREN.

This story has a happy ending. My mum looked everywhere for a replacement book for me, and never could. And then one day she saw it in the bookshelf at my brother’s kindy and bought it from them. So now I have a copy. And no squidgy small people around to ruin it.

Dear squidgy not so small people that I am related to, I love you, I do.

So anyway. I’m beginning to think that I will stop analysing these boxes at the end of Grade 12 (2005). I’ve kept one every year since then too, but I feel like it’s too soon or something. But I just love this project, and I hope you do too. I’ve had an idea that you are welcome to get involved in. I’m going to make a tumblr page that you can submit YOUR hoarded photos, letters, etc to, preferably with a little story to go with it. I will be putting this together in the next week or so, so stay tuned.

Lizzy King, Human - A Study. Box 1 Part 1

Box 1 - 1999, 2000, 2001 Part 1

When I was 11 years old I started a box. A box to put my letters in, a box for ticket stubs and photos, diaries and broken things worth keeping. It was 1999. I listened to a boy band called 5ive (so named because there were five of them, and words without letters were lame), and I had a crush on a boy named Matt, and then another boy called Harley. Harley liked Pokemon, I remember, Matt was very blonde and swam a lot.

The next year I made another box, I liked a boy named Mark, I still listened to 5ive and I read Harry Potter like it was going out of fashion, which it definitely wasn’t.

The year after that I suspect one or both of the boxes had broken, so I combined them into a large shoe box with Lynx written on the side. On the lid I wrote

1999

2000

2001

Yrs 6-8

Lynx

:) :)

I don’t know why I was compelled to rewrite the word Lynx, but there you go. I have kept a box for every year since. Well, sometimes I have combined two years in one, and around the time I started wearing smaller, daintier shoes, I had to use two boxes for the one year.

This is a study of my life.

So tomorrow is the second anniversary of my blog. Two years! And now I want to try something new. A new weekly project to sink my teeth into that will hopefully be interesting to other humans. So I’m going to study these boxes like a really shit anthropologist.

The goal is to be as objective as possible, but this will probably not always be the case, as my subject is, you know, me. I will go through each box, and write about the things I find in them. If an object inspires a particular memory, I will try to tell the story as best I remember it, if an item embarrasses me, I will chronicle it anyway. This is not an adventure in guilt, or in explaining myself, or in apologising for past Lizzy. Because, as we will learn in the coming weeks, past Lizzy can be hard to apologise for. She is at times wilfully cruel, selfish and chaotic, but she is also kind and loving and desperate to be included. These are not pleas for understanding, these are facts.

I shall go through the contents of each box as they are stored in it. The items will not be catalogued chronologically in and of themselves, but I will traverse the years in a somewhat linear fashion.

Also, I will try to be funny.

Item: Back Cover of School Diary – 2001

This cover has been ripped from the back of my school issued diary. Or perhaps it fell out. It is one of those trite, overly engineered things the school sometimes tried to do. It is an “autograph page”. Why a year 8 student would need to collect signatures is a mystery, but apparently I did. A handful of names and pictures are drawn there. I remember the pens we used, purple and green. Two areas are blacked out. On closer inspection at least one of them covers the name of a girl I no longer liked. Brutal.

Letter: From Mark – 2001

A Valentine's note from my grade 7 boyfriend, Mark. He apologises for its lateness and hopes I enjoy his present. I had forgotten that he spelt my name “Lizz”.

Extra points for the Superman S

Letter:  From my Auntie – 2000

A letter that must have come with a diary, because it tells me that I should write about the coming years in it. I may have started it, we shall soon see.

Photo: My own face – 17^th June 2001

Ah yes, I was a model, briefly. Or rather, I went and did a test shoot, probably costing my parents a fair amount of money but then hated it and never went back. This is the result of that shoot. There is a very pink background, and they have put make up on my very young face. So young! I am almost 13 but I look about 10. I look a lot like my sister, though she didn’t exist yet.

And thus a star is born

Book: Autographs – 2000

So obsessed with autographs! Here my grade 7 friends wish me good luck and good bye as we will “never see each other again” (ah, ladies, if only we’d known the wonders that facebook would bring). One girl tells me I am “not an evil brocili”, claims she will kill me if I start to like Bardot (a girl band) and ends with the oh-so-charming missive “don’t turn gay”. Lovely.

Flyer: Birch Carrol & Coyle Cinemas – 200?

Log On and Win! Amazing stuff. I have no idea why I kept this, but it is a fantastic time capsule moment. www.birch.com.au was so new and desperate for page views that all you had to do was go to it to go into the draw to win free movies for a year. 

Item: Envelope containing necklace – 2001

I suspect this is the Valentines present from Mark as mentioned previously. I don’t know if I ever wore it. I was not particularly nice to Mark.

Note: to self – 1999

An amazing note to myself, that is too hilarious not to share, so here it is in its entirety:

Harley loves me. He loves me. HE LOVES ME! YES!! Every boy I’ve ever liked has disliked me or I blew it but Harley _______ ________* loves me! And I adore him. I’m obsessed I am! Compared to Harley, Matt sucks! I hope I don’t get into trouble with Tahnee! (Bet you $50 I do)

*Full name eliminated to protect the innocent

I just want to analyse this for a moment. I am 11 at the time of writing. 11. Like… I am 2 years of even hinting at puberty. And so fickle! So brutal! Matt sucks? Poor child. What did he do? Swim away from me in the pool? Who knows? Meanwhile, why is Tahnee going to be mad at me? Have I stolen Harley from her? I just don’t know. I do know that Harley and I never “dated” so I’m not sure how I decided we were madly, passionately in love. Perhaps with some kind of satanic ritual? Meanwhile, I include his full name (including middle name) – creepy? Perhaps. But not as weird as betting myself $50 on something.

Letter – from Tahnee – 1999 or 2000

Oh god. Oh god. Here is this girl I possibly stole a boy from, telling me she loves me like a sister! This is horrific. It’s like Neighbours or something.

Word Processed Letter – from Tahnee – 1999 or 2000

Another letter, telling me (and our friend Anthea) that she loves us, and thanking us for being there for her. At the end she implores us to “always treasure this” which, can I just say, I fucking did. Fuck yes, not a terrible friend after all.

Bam