Written by my daughter Sarah in 1992 for a English assignment. She was a junior at Bexley High School:

I remember it all very clearly. It must have been 1986 or 1987 when my mother (Suzy) received the phone call from her best friend from high school, Betsy. Betsy lived in Eugene, Oregon, so she and my mother would tie up the phone for hours since they didn’t see each other much. Anyway, I could hear her laughing and talking to Betsy a little louder than usual. Of course, I was curious, so I hung around the kitchen waiting for her to hang up.

When she finally did, I could see she was excited about something. “Sarah,” she said, “a classmate of mine from Bexley wrote a book, and I’m in it.” Naturally, we had to run out and purchase the hardcover edition, “Be True to Your School” by Bob Greene, in which my mother is featured on page 48, paragraph two -  page 47 in the paperback edition, but that’s another story.

The book brought out a side of my mother I never knew. It was as if a title wave of teenage nostalgia washed over her as she began reminiscing about her high school days. She even went so far as to drag out an old trunk full of notes from her friends, cut slips, forged absence notes, photographs, and dried-up pressed flowers from prom. I decided to see why she was acting so weird, so I read Be True To Your School.

When I finished, an obvious but previously non-pondered idea occurred to me: Bob Greene, my parents, my friends’ parents, and every other adult in the world WAS ONCE A TEENAGER, too! As I mentioned, this statement is obvious, but I never realized that I had so much more in common with Bexley teenagers in 1964 than I thought.

Except for some minor technological differences, Bob and I shared very similar feelings and experiences. For instance, he and his friends cruised around Bexley; my friends and I cruise around Bexley. They listened to music and went to concerts, and so do we. Bob had fights with his friends, and so do I. Bob was on the Torch and the tennis team, and so am I. It’s as if I could personally identify with him.

There were many other things: experimenting with alcohol and smoking, experimenting with sex (or trying to), sneaking away from parents, going on road trips, and damaging your father’s car are all problems and experiences that most teenagers have today, as well as in Greene’s book. The parts that I could identify the most with were his parents nagging him to get his hair cut all the time. I know that sounds trivial, but it epitomizes all parents through the ages.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Greene’s diary. He made me realize that teenagers in 1992 have the same experiences as teenagers in 1964, and no matter what age you are, the teenage years are filled with the best memories. Below: hanging out with my friends in high school, 1992: