It’s 1997 and so far, there isn’t one damn mention of Y2K, nothing about my collection of Beanie Babies, or my want of an Easy Bake Oven that Santa forgot to bring two years in a row! What the hell?

This purple plastered Garfield diary is making it rounds, so have faith. All the goods must be yet to come.  

Quick recap: No sign of bus crush Neil or Best friend Alissa. I haven’t moved closer to The Big Apple yet, because I remember it happening after Christmas break. My TV crush is Danny and have discovered the holy grail movie, Grease. 

Here is November 1997. 

Nov. 11th 1997
Today Me Kelly, James rebilt
the Fire pit
and even we,
put the wood back.

Nov. 12 1997
every Day
I hug Mrs. Pike
I love her Because
she is nice, Buitful,
cool, loving, and caring.
Mrs. Pike is the
Best teach in the 
whole wide world.

Nov. 12th 1997
<3 Mrs. Pike <3

Nov. 12th 1997
Today it is 
snowing out.

Nov. 16th, 97
Today it just
snowed again and
even depper!
Cool!
I am going to make a
snowman. Cool!

[Dear Diary] It looks like I’ve graduated from pencil to red pen, cheers!

Pretty sure depper is deeper, although for a short second I thought it might be Pepper – our first family dog. But that didn’t make any sense, context clues people.

I purposely didn’t write out teacher, I meant teach. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a knack at shortening words for the fun of it. I still do it to this day and have no idea why or how/when it started. It looks like I’ve been doing it since the beginning of time.

That damn fire pit.

One night the whole fam-bam was sitting around it when bats started to swoop down and when I say swoop, I mean Kamikaze swoop. Within seconds Mom is wrangling her three kids and hauling ass back into the house while Super Dad swings plastic patio chairs in the air.

Believe it or not there are two more hilarious bat stories in our family.

(1) Mom, Grandma, Grandma’s longtime boyfriend (get it Granny), my sister and brother and I, took a vacation up to boyfriend’s lake house on Lake Erie. Us kids were sharing the upstairs bedroom while Mom and Grandma shared the bed downstairs, boyfriend got the couch.

Us kids had just snuggled in to our beds for the night, and I was reading my book by the nightlight (I’ve always been a nerd) when one of my sibs started to scream. “Something came in through the window! Something came in through the window!”

I hadn’t heard anything as I was in deep with my Babysitter’s Club book, so I started to look around. One curtain shake a later, a bat came flying out and smacking into the walls. We all went downstairs screaming.

And while we all went downstairs screaming, Grandma’s boyfriend came flying up the stairs (in his underwear) with an empty cereal box and a broom. Not sure what he was going to accomplish with his items, but we laugh about it still to this day. The mental image of an old, sleepy bald man in his underwear, who is standing in the hall dazed and confused, with an empty cereal box and broom.

(2) The family was at Home Depot getting whatever families need at Home Depot for a weekend project. We were walking down the main aisle and my Dad was lagging a little bit farther behind.

I turned my head for whatever reason and see my Dad crouched low with his hand in a swatting motion, aimed in my direction. In my head I’m yelling out, “What the flip did I do now!? I didn’t do anything! We’re in public!”

Before I could remember what I was guilty for, he swatted at something behind me and a quick whoosh of air went up my side.

A flipping bat. A damn bat was hanging on the back side of my shorts and hadn’t even noticed. Super Dad to the rescue.

Knock on wood, this is the last near death encounter anyone in my family has had with bats.

PS: We lived in the middle of freaking nowhere; loads of bats slept in the woods behind our house. The corn fields though, they made excellent model rocket launch pads after harvest season. Dad would light the fuse and us kids would chase the rocket down, twirling in aimless circles trying to be the kid who caught it.

My family has three bat stories, what does your family have? Haha. Let me know about your crazy animal encounter in the comment section below.