Have you hung onto those pen-and-paper diaries/journals you kept during your tender teenaged years? Feel like you missed out by not being able to display them to the world, ala today’s MySpace-ing kids?

Here’s the cure: “Cringe Night” and similar bar-based performance art, where 30- and 40-somethings recite their crusty entries for their own amusement (and others’).

“There’s no way you can get up and do this and sound cool,” said Sarah Brown, 29, creator of Cringe Night. Six years ago, she stumbled upon a box of her old diaries. She invited her best friend over and read passages aloud over a box of wine:

Jan. 5, 1991:

Jennifer and I were in Musicland, playing “Stairway to Heaven” on the keyboard and laughing. I was laughing and my hair (thank GOD I curled it today!) fell over my shoulder and for once I KNOW I looked good. Then I looked up and there he was, five feet away, like he was waiting to say something, and I know if he had said something, it would have been, “Sarah?”

I dunno. Purportedly, you’re laughing at yourself, but really, it’s your now-defenseless younger self. What’s the point? Everyone went through their awkward phases. This comes off as just seeing who was geekier than who, and how far they’ve subsequently come.

It may surprise some that I never did keep a journal way back in my high-school days. Not in college, either. Shortly after college, I started a paper-based journal, more out of boredom and to keep my writing skills limber; it didn’t last, and I’m pretty sure I trashed it shortly after abandoning it. A few years passed, and now of course, I’ve got the blog habit to provide a creative (and incriminating) channel.

I suppose I could print out my old blog and recite select posts from there. Since my teenaged angst didn’t make it to the Internet, I’m sure my Cringe Night contributions would be a poor fit.