Last year CBC had a Teen Angst contest for Canada Reads their annual literature competition between books chosen by well-known Canadian personalities.

These were the contest rules:

You can either write up a short description of one of your worst teenage moments. Or you can send in a diary entry from those years, with a little explanation if required.

The rules are simple:
-The judges will be looking for humour – even if the situation felt tragic at the time.
-The story or diary entry has to be your own.
-Maximum 250 words.

How could I not enter? I have to live up to my title as the Teen Angst Queen, after all. Honestly I didn’t think I’d win, but woohoo!

Title: Worst-Day-Ever-ish…Whatever

I was proudly walking to school with my best friend in my newest outfit from Value Village: camouflage pants, army boots, and 70s pajama top which perfectly complimented my faded purple hair which was clipped back with plastic ‘Days of the Week’ barrettes (Tuesday and Saturday). My punk-patched backpack was slung over one shoulder, as both would have just been l-a-m-e. Oh yeah, it was 1993.

Across the street from us was a gang of older yuppie kids we knew as, ‘The Flava.’ This was a name they had given themselves: sometimes they went as ‘The Flava posse,’ ‘The Flava Crew’ or just ‘The Posse.’ They wore baggy jeans and drove around suburban Calgary in shiny black trucks pumping early 90s hip-hop. These high school boys liked to call me and my friend, who were in jr. high, “The Dirties,” and in, “You’re such a dirty grunge rocker.” (Not the dirrty which Christina Aguilera later sung about in the early 00’s.) Sometimes they called us ‘dirty girls’ or ‘dirty punks’ or ‘dirty skids’ and one time, they raised a hand and uttered, ‘Yuck to you.’

We had walked a block away from The Flava when they pulled up beside us, rolled down their window, shouted, “Nice Pants Dirty!” then they threw an egg which hit me in the chest completely ruining my new vintage find. That night I cried and wrote a bad poem but I’ve never been able to wear camouflage since.

CBC Christina Aguilera Humour Literary contest pants poetry Teen Angst Vintage