I started keeping a diary on 12/25/62 (the day I turned eight) and I still do.
They’ll get my diaries when they pry them from my cold, dead hands.
If you live to be 80, you better have some pretty big cold, dead hands to hold that many diaries!
What happened January 22 1975?
Re-Diaries
I never really kept a diary. However, I’ve got psychological assessments and notes from teachers and therapists going back to the third grade. One day, I hope to compile them, add my own commentaries and have them published as something of a coffee table book.
Eve–what were you doing talking to Bette Davis as a teen, and what did she say beside rooting for Glenda???
I’m also interested to see that your fascination with old movies started very young.
I went to one of those “An Evening with Bette Davis” shows, and when she called on me I told her we had the same birthdate, so we wished one another Happy Birthday.
January 22 1975
"We got our Senior Portraits today, which almost made it a lovely day. I spent all day poring over my clear complexion and silky hair and wondering who that WAS. Nancy is going to give me hers tomorrow; I gave almost all of mine away. It’s nice to know so many people wanted one of me. Gerard is coming over to cut my hair again on Friday. Nancy drove me home at 65 mph over ice-slicked roads; I tore into the house and caught the last 20 minutes of Bombshell. I can’t talk to Becky till her midterms are over Wednesday. That portrait intrigues me, I am SUCH an egotist. Gotta go take my pill–ick.
1970-72 are now in shreds, so if anyone was married, born or interested in totally mundane and boring musings from 1973-77, lemme know . . .
Well, my birthday is August 24. Pick a year.
Aw, you pick one. If I posted my gawdawful musings from four diaries (I stopped before Aug. '77), Dopers would be dropping from boredom at a dangerous rate.
Mine’s March 17. I don’t care what year.
Say, what was your entry for July 4, 1976?
Okay. 1976. My 13th birthday.
July 4, 1976
“Not too much of a Bicentennial Day. I slept late (THAT’S Independence!). We all watched some festivities on TV, like the sailing ships in NY, and Ford examining the Liberty Bell. Betty marched, and Deb and Allan are at the Philly fireworks. July 4th always brings out the Norman Rockwell in me–I get a longing for provincial small towns, white picket fences and small grubby children waving little flags. Anyway, it was nice till an incredible hail and thunderstorm closed the day. Tomorrow I’m marching in the Bala Cynwyd Parade for Children’s Theater. Well, happy, Birthday, US–we made it THIS far in one piece.”
What I didn’t write, but I remember, is that I spent that day in the back yard painting an old bookshelf while my father mowed the lawn and my mother trimmed the rose bushes. How all-American is THAT? What creeps me out is that the Bicentennial Weekend is unofficially when AIDS entered the US full-force . . .
August 24, 1976 (Mr. Blue Sky becomes a teenager)
“Debbi and I just saw the unintentionally hilarious ‘horror’ film, Night of the Lepus, concerning giant bunnies attacking Arizona–strewth! Betty and I went downtown today and found the Meyer-Feinstein Building, where my appointment is next week. Seeing it there, so new and official-looking, was a little reassuring, and also more than a little scary. It’s bad enough they’re taking blood, but they’re also injecting me with dye! Next week the TV show Medical Center involves a transsexual! Betty will be in Calif.–Maybe Mom will watch it with me. She has a hairline fracture of her rib, with contusions; my hay fever and allergies were incredibly bad today.”
I warned ya–self-involved and whiny . . .
How about February 28, 1976?
How about March 17, 1973?
Argh, too bad 03 June 1971 is already lost…
March 17, 1973
"At 12:00 tonight I’ll take off my POW bracelet, of Raymond Schrump, as he has been home for some time. We left for New York at 9:00 today. Saw the loveliest sunset I’ve ever seen on my way back. We first went to the Guggenheim, then the Museum of Modern Art, where we were set loose for a couple of hours. They had a huge photography exhibit. We got back around 5:30–it was so windy! And rainy! I went to Grandmom’s apartment and Dad picked me up. Tomorrow at 4:30 I go to rehearsal at school, and I have SO MUCH work to do!
February 28, 1976
“I called Mom at the hospital, she’s going home tomorrow. She seems quite happy about it, except they found a hernia of her esophagus. Betty called from Philadelphia and we had a delightful talk–she’s coming up (down?) to visit and see me in the play in March! Jane and I saw the excellent–but depressing and gory–Taxi Driver, with wonderful performances by Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster (the wunderkind of the profession). I missed dinner and there’s not much to eat here, but it won’t kill me to go without a couple of meals . . .” . . . and here I must censor the rest of the entry. I mean, I am in college and it’s 1976, and if you people think I am going to tell you everything in my diaries, you’re nuts.
That’s it, I think, I’m going to start shredding wholesale now.
Was this theraputic in any way?
Well, in the sense that “I could very well be dead in the next week or the next month or the next year, and ain’t nobody reading this drek after I’m gone!” Cleaning house, literally.
Just out of curiosity, what does that last entry say?
Geez…I find this incredibly depressing. Like watching a friend commit suicide slowly.
If you wanted whiny and tedious, I could’ve posted my own journal entries (any date, any year, pretty much the same neuroses). Yours still carry life. I keep thinking what a wonderful basis for an autobiography, these notes from the past intertwined with a present-day running commentary. I’m all about shredding & discarding, but not journals. Certainly not anything that old. Not when they’re written in such a lovely voice by a fascinating person.
I’m just too sad to read this thread anymore.