November 13 - Auto-correct and Australia

So I’ve finished another week of grad school, so I figured I’d celebrate by updating this incomparable blog with more tales of my youthful silliness. As always, I hope you enjoy, and I’m sure you’ll tell all your friends.

Third Grade Journal – November 10, 1991
Today is Nov. 10th¹

¹ – The entry for this day is entirely composed of these three hearts. I guess love was in the air.

Third Grade Journal – November 12, 1991
Today is Nov.12 My day w² has been a very good day. first I passed football with Evan who him and Sean are getted giting³ atougraphs for from⁴ people in my class

² – This entry is filled with typos, most of which I even tried to correct. I guess I was originally going to write “My day was good,” but instead switched it to “has been” to make it clear that I wasn’t ready for the goodness to be over.
³ – You’re 0 for 2 thus far, sport, give it another try.
⁴ – Getting autographs for the people in class would probably have been more amusing. I mean I know I’m going to be famous, and that third grade autograph will prove to be incredibly valuable, but other than that…

Sixth Grade ALP Journal – November 7, 1994
I am starting to like A.L.P. class better.⁵

⁵ – And I’m starting to like these ALP entries less. Not only are they erratic, but I find very few of them interesting. Since I’m the guy who wrote them, I can’t imagine how silly and useless they must be for you.

Sixth Grade Journal – November ??, 1994
1 station 2 padlock 3 swagman⁶ 4 jumbuck⁷ 5 billabong⁸ 6 emu 7 koala 8 kangaroo 9 dingo 10 kookaburra 11 Ayers Rock⁹ 12 echidna 13 aborigines 14 wallaby 15 mumbat¹⁰ 16 wombat 17 platypus 18 pavlova¹¹ 19 bandicoot 20 aussie 21

⁶ – A swagman, also called a tussocker, is an Australian term for a poor transient worker who carried his waterproof bedroll (known as a swag) on his back. I’m sure you can see the image in your head.
⁷ – Australian term for a sheep. I know that these footnotes now seem like actual footnotes, but I went to Wikipedia myself so you wouldn’t have to (and so I can pretend that you would have been interested enough to do so).
⁸ – Australian term for an oxbow lake. I tried reading the Wikipedia entry about oxbow lakes and it didn’t make much sense to me. Further research is on you.
⁹ – Ayers Rock is a legitimately awesome site in the middle of Australia. I’m sure you can tell by now that my teacher who was obsessed with Australia conned Mrs Robertson into getting us to make a journal entry listing random Australian words.
¹⁰ – No idea what this is. I assumed that it was some animal, but since there isn’t an entry for it on Wikipedia, I can only assume that it is fake and couldn’t possibly exist.
¹¹ – Like the dessert? That’s about as Australia-specific as “padlock.”

Sixth Grade Journal – Nomber 11, 1994
It means war, and all of the many, many people who died for the U.S.A.¹²

¹² – I can only assume that this is a reference to Veterans’ Day (I didn’t write down the topic!) or some continuation of the previous entry about flags.