Hot Pants Birthday! Studies in Crap presents the 1972 diary of a Catholic high school girl

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

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Author: Teen diarist Terri, a student at St. Thomas Aquinas

Date: 1972

Discovered at: Unsorted box buried deep in a Westport estate-sale basement

The Cover Promises: “1/2 Frosh Year + Soph Summer”

Representative Quote:

• “Now I have $5.10, enough to buy a pair of earrings and Super Sheer. Well, this week has been cold and exciting because I wondered all week if I had a boyfriend or not.” (January 18)

Your Crap Archivist admits that he has on occasion picked through the private journals of young girls. That said, my privacy-invading has never before sunk me as low as it did a couple weeks back when, on my knees in a mildewed basement, I found myself jimmying the lock of a Catholic school girl’s diary. Turns out, Jimmying isn’t my thing. The lock popped off, and this chilling message greeted me from inside the diary’s cover:

“No one if I can help it will never flip through the preceding pages.”

The author continues in this vein:

“I will never quote what is in the preceding pages to anyone NEVER.”