Emily in Maplewood, Minnesota: "Teenage Days"
TEENAGE DIARIES
Produced by: Joe Richman All Things Considered (NPR)
04/08/96

Robert Siegel, host: From NPR news this is ATC. Iím Robert Siegel

NOAH ADAMS, Host: And I'm Noah Adams. There are many ways to be a teenager late in the 20th century. In the weeks ahead, All Things Considered will be
investigating some of the ways, through audio diaries that have been kept by
young people around the country. We begin the series today with the story of Emily Thompson.

[music]

EMILY THOMPSON: Good morning and welcome to Rock and Roll Homeroom. I'm Emily Thompson, along with Laurie Priefer. We're from Tartan High School, and welcome to our show.
LAURIE PRIEFER: On revolution radio, Rev 105.

[music - "Friend of P" by The Rentals]

NOAH ADAMS: Emily is 16 years old and lives in Maplewood, Minnesota. A while
back, Emily and a friend were deejays for a day on a local Minneapolis rock
station. About the same time, Emily started carrying around a tape recorder and microphone and she began doing interviews with her friends. Not for the
Minneapolis radio station Rev 105, but for us. This is Emily's story. Emily Thompson spent her childhood wishing she was 16, leaving her room messy so it would look like a typical teenager's room, doing pretend homework to be like the real teenagers. She never thought she would grow up to be a teenager, but she did.


EMILY: Teenage life - stereotypical teenage life. I mean, for me, teenage life was always defined by McDonald's commercials where they had `the gang.' They would say that at the bottom - `the gang at McDonald's,' and they have, like, this group of people. They're like, `boys and girls,' who are just - this group of friends at McDonald's and they were just doing stuff, and that was always my idea of teenage life. And, I mean, I guess in some ways, I do have that.

[music fades out]

EMILY: Hello? No, wrong button. Wait - hello? There. Hello? Hello, my name is Emily. Ahh! Hi, my name is Emily. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota - whoops. I don't live in St. Paul. Hello, my name is Emily. Ahh! Hello, my name is Emily. I'm 16 years old and I live in Maplewood, Minnesota, which is a suburb of St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota. That's it. Over and out. Goodbye.

[outside sounds, Emily gets in car, door slams]

1st YOUNG WOMAN: Oh, it's cold! Get in, get in! It's a 15-below wind chill. It's cold!

[music - "The Head on the Door" by The Cure - plays in background, one friend hums along]

EMILY: My neighborhood - I live in a typical suburban house, two-story house with a basketball hoop in the front yard. I guess I like my neighborhood. It's where I grew up. I can't change it. My parents - that's what they chose. They didn't want diversity or culturalism. They wanted to be safe in the suburbs.

1st YOUNG WOMAN: Oh, I would just like to inform everyone about Emiline's
mother. I called tonight and she said, `Bueno?' And I'm like, `Is Emily there?'
and she's like, `Si, un momemto.'
EMILY: Did she really?
2nd YOUNG WOMAN: I love it when the trumpets play on this song. Here it comes - doh, doh, doh.

[music fades under]

EMILY: There's a lot of kids in my neighborhood, which is nice. Playing in the street - that was a big part of growing up for me, playing in the street. Playing basketball on summer nights, and, oh, we'd, like, blast the radio really loud at, like, nine o'clock at night, and it would just be so cool. And then we'd lay out on the street and look at the stars. The suburban night stars. Those were the days. It seems like not very long ago, but, I mean, my childhood's over with. I can't even understand that, I guess. You don't realize how important it is until it's gone.

[music and car sound fade out]

[guitar strum]

1st YOUNG WOMAN: Listen to this. [plays out-of-tune chord on the guitar] Ching!

EMILY: People probably label me and my friends as the alternatives, or, like, tree huggers or grungers or, you know, some stupid classification thatdoesn't mean anything. Like I do to everyone else. It's funny, because one of myfriends, Jenny, she's friends with the sporto girls.

EMILY: [talking to Jenny] See, now, see my point, I've, like, been basically ostracized from the sporto world. But in your case, you're sort of accepted by them. So, what is the trait that makes someone a sporto?
JENNY: There's preppy sportos, but sporto is an all-encompassing thing. I mean, you can be, like, a pseudo-alternative and still be a sporto.
EMILY: OK, what else?
JENNY: They wear their little pug's face downward, not upward. I do mine upward, they go downward.
EMILY: She's talking about ponytails.
JENNY: It's like a little- it's like a little bun sort of a deal, a chignon sort of thing, if you will. But it's headed downward, and it's, like, tucked under, and you're pretty- you're a freak if you have it up, so I've been questioned for my upwardness.

EMILY: Everyone classifies each other. I mean, there's not enough time
to actually get to know everybody, to know what they're all about. I mean, you
see someone and you make a quick judgment on them. That's a classification. I
mean, people are always saying, `Oh, it's what's inside that matters,' but it's
the way that you choose to present yourself to the world, is how you look, how
you dress, and people are going to judge you on that. There's nothing you can do
to change it.

[guitar strumming fades out]

[outside sound, car sound fade in]

EMILY: OK, ready?
1st YOUNG WOMAN: I'm ready, baby.
EMILY: It's a girl's night out. Turn the radio up.

[music - "Love For Sale" by the Talking Heads]

EMILY: We do have times when I just feel like this typical teenager, just running around and having this typical teenager night. One night, I remember- I don't even know what we did. I mean, It was just the whole feeling of the night, where we all just drove around, didn't care. We were just there, and that's what we did. It was just so stupid. It's so funny how a lot of the best times that you have aren't doing anything.
1st YOUNG WOMAN: There's boys walking behind us. There's some boys walking
behind us! There's some boys walking behind-
2nd YOUNG WOMAN: We're going on a drive-by. We wanted to get some boys on this.

[car slows down]

1st YOUNG WOMAN: [talking out the window] Do you guys want to be interviewed on a radio thing?
1st YOUNG MAN: Why?
1st YOUNG WOMAN: `Cause.
2nd YOUNG WOMAN: How's the weather in Minnesota? Just tell us that.
1st YOUNG MAN: Groovy.
1st YOUNG WOMAN: Groovy?
1st YOUNG MAN: Yeah.
1st YOUNG WOMAN: That's good, and what are your names?
1st YOUNG MAN: Drew.
1st YOUNG WOMAN: All right, thanks.
EMILY: Aren't you Jason's brother?
1st YOUNG MAN: Yeah.
[all laugh]
1st YOUNG WOMAN: OK, that's all. Thanks.

[music begins to fade]

EMILY: Sometimes, it's like, you get so caught up in having fun. You know, fun - is fun good for you or not, because, sure, you're really happy when it happens but all the other times, you're not happy because you realize how much fun you could be having but you're not.

[car sound, music fade out]

EMILY: [blows on microphone] Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. OK, it's 2:28 in the morning. OK, now I'm in the downstairs bathroom because it's late at night and I don't want to wake up my parents. But when I was little, I used to come and hide in here from my parents. Whenever we would get in a big fight, I would always lock myself in the bathroom and I always thought that I could just live in a bathroom. I mean, you got water, you know?

[sings quietly] I want to be-e-e. I always wanted to be older when I was little. 'Cause it was cool. You know, go to the drive-through and order hamburgers, like on Happy Days. You know, getting in fights with your parents and getting grounded. You just thought it was the coolest thing. I mean, you need a goal when you're little. That's your goal: to grow up and be a teenager.

I don't know. I'm supposed to talk about what being a teenager means but- well, people always say that it's the best years of your life or something. It's kind of sad, it's kind of weird. I mean, you never hear, like, a 16-year-old saying, `These are the best years of my life.' You always hear a 35-year-old saying, `Those were the best years of my life.' I mean, people are really mean in high school and you don't remember that. And you forget just, like, a lot of the feelings that you had, just like of, you know, not knowing what you want to do or like being embarrassed or something. You kind of forget that. Yeah, being a teenager is overrated. It's like- it's just like- when you see a preview for a movie, and then the movie is- is like about something totally different than the preview was for. That's exactly what it's like.

Well, it's probably very late. Oh, yeah, it's 2:40 now. Alas, there is no cure for sleeping so I must go to sleep. So, that is my story. La-di-da.

[tape recorder clicks off]

[music]

LAURIE PRIEFER (Teen Radio DJ): And now here's Emily with our local high school band spotlight.
EMILY: Right now, on Rock and Roll Homeroom, here's Fingerpaint, from Minneapolis.

[music plays for awhile, then fades]

NOAH ADAMS: This story was written and recorded by 16-year-old Emily Thompson and produced by Joe Richman. It's part of the series, `Teenage Diaries,' which will continue every Monday in April. Next week, we'll meet a young man in New York City with Tourette's Syndrome.

You're listening to All Things Considered.



© 1996, Joe Richman