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Laura GodfreyLaura Godfrey
Graduated with a BA from York University in 2008, where I worked as the Assistant Arts Editor at Excalibur, the university's community newspaper...

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Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, nostalgia, reading series,

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On Wednesday night at The Tranzac downtown, a 34-year-old man took to the stage and spewed more than 60 insults and obscenities to a large crowd. They hooted with laughter, gasped at the more taboo terms and broke out into applause when it was all over.

Andrew Jehan’s performance was an extreme example of what audiences might hear at Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, a free reading series whose name pretty much says it all. This was the eighth installment of a show where people read old diary entries, angsty teen poetry and mystifying grade school assignments to a roomful of strangers.

“I was a timid kid. I tried to avoid conflict and scary people, but one day, someone shouted an insult at me,” said Jehan during his performance, prefacing the list he wrote at 12 years old.

“They called me a name, and I didn’t know what to do. I was going through puberty at the time, so I wanted to defend myself and not just run away like a baby – I ended up standing there going ‘uh…’ So I went home, and resolved to develop my repertoire of comebacks.”

Hence the profanity.

Dan Misener, who works on CBC Radio’s Spark, got the idea for this reading series more than three years ago during a trip to his girlfriend’s parents’ house in Kingsville, Ont. Among old cardboard boxes, his girlfriend Jenna – now his wife – was surprised to find her seventh-grade diary. After reading some of the more memorable entries out loud, Misener was convinced this was something other people could take part in.

Since then, the series has developed a devoted following. Earlier this year, Misener pitched the idea of a CBC Radio show based on the series, and put together a pilot episode that weaves “sad-larious” performance clips with ideas about the role of nostalgia in our lives. Misener has been talking to the CBC’s program development committee, whose feedback to date seems positive.

While preparing for the radio show, Misener read Yearning for Yesterday, a book which explains why people are drawn to events and memories from their past.

“What happens in your 20s and 30s is that maybe you’re leaving school, buying a house, getting married or having a kid,” Misener said. “They’re big life changes in that time when you’re becoming a proper, capital-A Adult, and when you’re uncertain about where your life is going, it can be comforting to look back at who you were.”

Yvonne Gettins, 29, who read several preteen diary entries, said being in front of a crowd helps thwart her fear of public speaking. She figures nothing can top a mortifying ninth-grade experience involving a big, fake mosquito nose, a school assembly and a subsequent full-page spread in the school yearbook.

“I was in grade nine, so I was already at the bottom of the food chain,” she said. “I’m able to laugh at it now, but I think that was one of the most humiliating things of my life, so since then, nothing is ever as bad as that.”

Although the mood in the room is light and Misener’s stage banter is endearing, he’s aware of how nervous his readers must feel – and he seems to think it helps.

“It’s a scary thing for someone to get up in front of a crowd anytime. It certainly is for me. But if you can channel that nervousness into a kind of pleasant awkwardness, that’s a good thing,” he said. “We’ve tried to create a welcoming environment where people aren’t super-nervous to do that, but they’re still nervous, and I think that makes it a little bit funnier.”