The older we get, the farther we feel from whatever wild oats we've sown. I'm just 50, but when I talk to my daughters, in their early 20s now, about my childhood, they seem to think I grew up in medieval times. Who knows what must they think of my parents' youth -- or grandparents' era?

Have times really changed? Yes and no. If you glance around at Millennials, who don't see color or gender lines, who spend each waking hour attached to earbuds or a small screen, who live privileged and Internet-shaped lives -- life seems very different from when we were kids.

A Treasure Trove

The question, "Have things changed?" came up a lot when I was researching and editing my book, I've Got Some Lovin' to Do: The Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen. When my 101-year-old great-aunt passed away in 2011, I inherited a box of papers and found therein a trove of her teen diaries, starting in 1925. From the first page, I heard her 15-year-old voice, speaking in 1920s slang of things I had never known and yet, it was all so familiar.

After one afternoon at a Sunday School lecture, she wrote, "This boy has done more to influence my life than all of Daddy's lectures can begin to." There in a nutshell, is the bane of a parent's existence: We can talk ‘til we go hoarse, to no avail, but if a friend says it, suddenly, the clouds part and the angels sing and your kid thinks he knows it all. (Slaps forehead.)

The Doris Diaries

Doris Bailey, my great-aunt, was so similar to me as a teenager, and to my teens now. Like me in 1978, Doris worried about school and clothes in diary entries in 1925: "Oh, but I hate school!! I stayed out just one day and now I have so much to make up. Damn it. If I only had some decent clothes to wear. All would be well."

Parents of teenagers were heartless in the 1920s, it seems: "I asked Mother and she said, no, absolutely I could not go outside of the house this weekend. Furthermore, I could not have a new dress and blah! blah! blah! After I work all week long trying to make good grades and then they act that way. I think I need a little recreation after slaving all week. They are crushing the youth out of me." Sound familiar?

In fact, the more of Doris's diaries I read, I felt that there were more and more similarities, rather than differences that separated us. Teens today have mp3 players to take their music with them. Yes, but teens in the 1920s sang popular tunes, church songs, folk songs (the radio was just coming into homes). When Doris goes out with her friends, she often recounts them as singing; some friends had ukuleles (the iPod of its day) and played all the new songs. Teens and cars, crushes on boys, good or bad grades all of these refrains were familiar to Doris in 1925, and to my teens today.

Puppy Love

What else is the same? "Bob phoned. I wish it had been Jack, tho. It always is that way. The ones I like don't pay me any attention and those I'm not wild about do. Darn it!!" Doris wrote that in 1926.

She fancies herself in love, writing overwrought prose to describe the experience. "I like Micky about five times as much as is good for me. I have a feeling that I have lost him forever. I feel my heart getting heavier and heavier within me. When Micky looks at me I feel as if he were trampling my very soul beneath his feet."

And when a new boy in dashingly modern clothes catches her eye, she gushes: "There is a boy that lives only three doors from here. I've seen him several times at Lincoln [High School]. He was awfully cute, wore golf knickers and dressed just spiffy."

Best Friends Forever

Can three girls get along in 1925? "I've just been talking to Alyce, and we've had our annual squabble about Marjie. It's so strange that these two girls who I am so fond of dislike each other so intensely."

And what do you say when a friend betrays you? "Then I noticed to my horror that Alyce was flirting with him. He pulled her down on his lap and grinned at her. I felt myself get hot and cold. Oh, she couldn't, she wouldn't do a thing like that. I'm so heartsick. I can hardly live. I don't see how she could do a thing like that. And yet she has the nerve to call herself my friend."

Teen Life in a Nutshell

Doris doesn't see the big picture, much like my teens and studying: "I got my report card today. I think it is pretty good. Daddy managed to restrain his joy, however. These parents simply refuse to be pleased. The better I am, the better they want me to be."

And here's that scornful tone they take when talking about adults: "Helped Mother all day. She's giving a dinner party, and oh, of all the noise. They talk about us kids making a racket but I wish they could hear themselves. Oh ye gods!!!"

So maybe the slang has changed, and maybe the style of hair, clothes or cars. But inside? Teens are still teens.

Julia Park Tracey, author of "I've Got Some Lovin' to Do: The Diaries of a Roaring 20s Teen" (1925-1926).

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