Especially For Girls Journal – Magic Summer

(This week, I have some overlap because I wrote about the experience of getting the tickets in the journal.)

The Especially For Girls book club was a mail away book program advertised on basic cable, mostly on Nickelodeon and during USA’s Cartoon Express line up. I don’t remember it showing up during network Saturday morning or after school syndicated programming.

When I asked my mother if she remembered why she let me sign up for the book club, I expected to hear an account of a hearty debate. Instead, she told me she agreed to it because it was books for me.  Since there’s not much of a story there, I decided to pick my favorite book: My Private Journal. The funny thing is, the journal was the “free gift”.

From the outside, it looks like an average blank book, but inside, there are special sections. There’s about a page each in the front to record biographical information, favorites, travel notes, a blank calendar for birthdays and holidays, and a section devoted to academics and extracurriculars. 

There’s no sign of the stickers that were mentioned in the commercial, so I’m guessing I stuck those on or in everything but the journal. 

The exciting part was “My Secrets”. This was where the (formerly) blank pages began and the fun really started. There’s just one problem. For some reason, I didn’t put dates on my earliest entries. I have some accounts of events I attended but no idea of when a lot of them were. Some of the people I wrote about I haven’t seen or even thought of in decades. 

On the morning of June 24, 1990, my mom took me and my friend Vivi to our local music store, Turtles. Turtles had a Ticketmaster and we went there to try to get our New Kids on the Block Magic Summer Tour tickets. 

While Vivi and I waited at Turtles, my mom went to the Coconuts a few miles away. Coconuts also had a Ticketmaster. It was a whole don’t put all the eggs in one basket kind of situation.  My mother has always been practical, which she learned from my grandfather. 

I asked my mom about this and she told me she was gone for maybe half an hour to forty-five minutes. She also told me the line at Coconuts was a lot shorter than the one at the Turtles had been. Also, I had forgotten the area between the mall and the shopping center with the Turtles hadn’t been built up yet so there was no traffic. 

When my mom pulled up to the Turtles, she told us to get in the car. We had at least another half an hour to wait in line. We asked her why, but she didn’t tell us we had the tickets until after we got in, closed the door, and drove to another store front in the shopping center. That was when my mom showed us the tickets. 

The concert itself wasn’t for several more weeks, but that day was the kickoff to what would definitely be a “Magic Summer”.