For my 7th birthday, someone gave me a diary. How do I know this? Because I recently unearthed it while going through some boxes in the closet that my parents passed on to me when we moved to Tucson. The boxes are labeled simply "BMW stuff" (BMW are my initials) and they are a veritable goldmine of memories. I'll share a few ridiculous diary excerpts with you today for Flashback Friday. Almost every page of this diary could be its own FF but they might only be interesting to me.
The second page of my diary is as you see here (the first page was filled with such inanities as a listing of all the people in my first-grade class):
"Friday October 7, 1988. I walk to school. I ride the bus back. My favrite foods are chinese food. Mexican food. I can eat with chop sticks. I am going to a opera with my dad. The opera is called Tosca! I think that I will like the opera. [redacted] My frainds are Heidi Jessica C. Jessy [lastname] Erica. Natalie. Jennifer. July [Julee]. Shauna. Jandon. Jasmin. Katie Z. My sister teresa she's younger then me. Sometimes she bothers me. and I don't like it."
Fascinating, I know. It gets even more dramatic on the next few pages with a long-suffering tale about a soccer game (probably my brother Blair's, who was 12 at the time).
"Saterday Oct. 8, 1988. This is a Haert person. We are going to a soccer game. I hate soccer games but I can't do anything about it so I am going." Oh, poor oppressed 7-year-old me. It must have really been terrible playing on the playground for an hour in the great outdoors.
"We are going to Bonny Slope [a local school] for the soccer game. It takes a long time to get there and I'm bored. I am glad that the day is over. I want to take a nap. We are on are way home! I got the ticets for my birthday. The tosca." I vividly remember this opera. I also remember this soccer game, now that I think about it. But I don't remember being such a martyr about it. Sheesh.
Then there are such righteous gems as this one, from October 18, 1988:
"this is a verse from the Bible: Do not forget to do good and to share. -Hebrews 13:16 (NKJV)"
This entry leaves me with a few questions. What on earth was I thinking, writing bible verses in my diary, entirely free of context? Why that particular one? And why the sam hill am I quoting the New King James version, and attributing it as such, even though Mormons generally use and own the King James version? I don't even know where I would have gotten my hands on a NKJV Bible. Sadly, the surrounding entries in my diary shed no light on these mysteries.
I kept this diary on and off for almost four years. Its contents encompass such events as going to Dairy Queen, falling off the monkey bars, losing the back of an earring, looking forward to Teddy Bear Club (?), the time our Christmas tree fell over, and learning cursive writing. The diary ends right around the start of the Persian Gulf War, in 1992. Rudely scrawled interruptions from my two older brothers are sprinkled liberally throughout. Some of them I erased or crossed out; sadly, I did so well enough that I can't read the writing anymore. I mention in places having torn out the defaced pages. It's too bad - I would love to read them now.
One that survived goes like this, courtesy of Blair: "I am so ugly. I hate to look at myself in the mirror. I throw up every time. Blair can beat me up just by breathing on me. I am so weak. Who do I think I am anyway?"
I think my diary-keeping momentum was considerably slowed by my brothers' vandalism. In fact, the very last entry in this diary was written not by me, but by my brother Daniel. You may recall his sensitivity to smells. Well, he wrote in my diary, "Hair spray lady puts on five gallons a day and she loves [boy's name]."
And thus my fragile little 10-year-old diary self was too crushed to go on writing. The rest of the pages after that are completely blank. But it was good while it lasted, at least.
The second page of my diary is as you see here (the first page was filled with such inanities as a listing of all the people in my first-grade class):
"Friday October 7, 1988. I walk to school. I ride the bus back. My favrite foods are chinese food. Mexican food. I can eat with chop sticks. I am going to a opera with my dad. The opera is called Tosca! I think that I will like the opera. [redacted] My frainds are Heidi Jessica C. Jessy [lastname] Erica. Natalie. Jennifer. July [Julee]. Shauna. Jandon. Jasmin. Katie Z. My sister teresa she's younger then me. Sometimes she bothers me. and I don't like it."
Fascinating, I know. It gets even more dramatic on the next few pages with a long-suffering tale about a soccer game (probably my brother Blair's, who was 12 at the time).
"Saterday Oct. 8, 1988. This is a Haert person. We are going to a soccer game. I hate soccer games but I can't do anything about it so I am going." Oh, poor oppressed 7-year-old me. It must have really been terrible playing on the playground for an hour in the great outdoors.
"We are going to Bonny Slope [a local school] for the soccer game. It takes a long time to get there and I'm bored. I am glad that the day is over. I want to take a nap. We are on are way home! I got the ticets for my birthday. The tosca." I vividly remember this opera. I also remember this soccer game, now that I think about it. But I don't remember being such a martyr about it. Sheesh.
Then there are such righteous gems as this one, from October 18, 1988:
"this is a verse from the Bible: Do not forget to do good and to share. -Hebrews 13:16 (NKJV)"
This entry leaves me with a few questions. What on earth was I thinking, writing bible verses in my diary, entirely free of context? Why that particular one? And why the sam hill am I quoting the New King James version, and attributing it as such, even though Mormons generally use and own the King James version? I don't even know where I would have gotten my hands on a NKJV Bible. Sadly, the surrounding entries in my diary shed no light on these mysteries.
I kept this diary on and off for almost four years. Its contents encompass such events as going to Dairy Queen, falling off the monkey bars, losing the back of an earring, looking forward to Teddy Bear Club (?), the time our Christmas tree fell over, and learning cursive writing. The diary ends right around the start of the Persian Gulf War, in 1992. Rudely scrawled interruptions from my two older brothers are sprinkled liberally throughout. Some of them I erased or crossed out; sadly, I did so well enough that I can't read the writing anymore. I mention in places having torn out the defaced pages. It's too bad - I would love to read them now.
One that survived goes like this, courtesy of Blair: "I am so ugly. I hate to look at myself in the mirror. I throw up every time. Blair can beat me up just by breathing on me. I am so weak. Who do I think I am anyway?"
I think my diary-keeping momentum was considerably slowed by my brothers' vandalism. In fact, the very last entry in this diary was written not by me, but by my brother Daniel. You may recall his sensitivity to smells. Well, he wrote in my diary, "Hair spray lady puts on five gallons a day and she loves [boy's name]."
And thus my fragile little 10-year-old diary self was too crushed to go on writing. The rest of the pages after that are completely blank. But it was good while it lasted, at least.