Teenage Diaries Revisited Listen to Amanda's diary 16 years later »

Amanda is gay. Amanda’s family is Catholic. And she’s having a hard time convincing her parents that this is not “just a phase.”

“When I was in the first grade, I remember one day we were playing a game that was kind of like Sleeping Beauty, where like the prettiest girl on the block fell asleep on a picnic bench. And you know, somebody had to go and wake her up, to like, kiss her and revive her and it would always be one of the boys. And I always felt like I wanted to go and revive her.”

This story originally aired on NPR’s All Things Considered in 1996.