"I'm an Upstart!"

Val wanted to see some pics of me when I was really into punk rock. The date on the back of these photos is Oct. 14, 1981. I was a senior in High School, and age 16. My b-day was not for another month. As you can see, I was "juggylicious", yet I still had no boyfriends!! Why my family harangued me about my weight I'll never understand because I look back on these pictures and I was not fat. Mom never could take a picture w/o cutting off the top of someone's head.

Here I am with the full-on "cat eye" makeup, including bright purple eye shadow. And my beloved army jacket which I think my mother tossed out after removing the pins and patches.I did an incredibly stupid & immature thing. In Feb. 1982, I started going out with a punk rock dude from the next town over; he too was a senior in high school. We were really tight for those first six months; we fell in love right away, and he'd even asked me to marry him about 2 months into our relationship. Then I went off to college in Maine in August, 1982, and our relationship completely fell apart. He dumped me in Feb. 1983. I was so heartbroken that I destroyed every single photograph of us, him, our friends, etc. I even destroyed the negatives. I wanted no reminders of my time with him. So my photo albums have a huge gap, from late 1981 to the fall of 1982 at St. Joe's. These 3 photos are all that survived of my punk days.