Dear Diary

   As a teacher, I encourage my fourth graders to write in their journal every morning.  I don’t grade it. I don’t even look in it. I want them to be able to write without fear of spelling something wrong or writing, “we was gonna go”, or something that makes me normally cringe.  They can write a poem or tell what they did the last evening, or what they ate for dinner. They can even draw a little picture with the journal entry if they want to. I just want them to write.

  I also buy a nice journal to give out at the end of each nine-week grading period to the student who gets the most tickets. I hand out tickets for everything: winning the spelling game, Sparkle, random acts of kindness, winning math relays or for complimenting how nice their teacher looks that day. That will earn major brownie points. I like to buy a journal, because I would like them to want to write in a journal at home.  My own children had journals and they still have them. They take them out and read them occasionally when they want a good laugh.  Luckily, mine are long gone. Oh, but I remember a lot of what I wrote.

  I don’t remember how old I was for sure, but my diary (now known by the word, journal, so boys could write it in too), held all kinds of secrets. Mine  had a little key that locked up the diary so my brother and  sister could not read that I was writing about them. I hid  the key in a secure location. I had a little jewelry box that had a ballerina on top of it. Inside, I hid the key  under the velvet lining at the bottom. No, wait. That’s what the girl did in Silence of the Lambs. No, wait, I did that first. Maybe many girls hid their key there. I thought it was a brilliant place.

   I remember finding my old diary one weekend when I was home from college and I was astonished. First, I couldn’t get over how pretty my handwriting was compared to how it was in college. I mean, it wasn’t gorgeous.  My best friend, Ramaine, had the best penmanship of anyone in the whole school. It had such flair.  Secondly, I couldn’t believe the lies I wrote. I wrote lies in a DIARY that no one else was ever going to read. I mean, who does that?

 It was only two entries, but I will remember it for the rest of my life. I don’t remember writing it. It went something like this.

  “Day, Date (can’t remember)  I can’t wait till Friday! My dad is taking us to see the Monkees! It’s in Pittsburgh. We will get to ride through the tunnels.  I can’t hold my breath like everyone else because Mom says when I was born my lungs were too young so she had to flick at the bottom of my feet to make me cry. But I will try. I LOVE you, Davy Jones.!!

Maybe it wasn't a lie....

Day, Date- We got to see the Monkees!!!!!  We sat up front and Peter Tork (his real name is Torkelson, you know) waved at me. They sang so many songs. I am playing Last Train to Clarksville right now when I am writing this. I love the Monkees!”

 What a weird child. I do remember asking my dad if he would take us to see the Monkees if  they came to town. You have to understand that when I was very very young, I thought that the people singing in the radio were actually singing at “WEIR 1430 on your dial.”  I had seen a picture of people doing a radio show and thought even singers did that. I was so green. Had so much to learn.

  We never went to see the Monkees. Unless of course, I have amnesia. That could be it.  For the love of God, who lies in their own diary? Why, that would be the skinny little loser girl with the Twiggy haircut wearing the lovely peddle-pushers.

I had this lunchbox. I was so...special.

 Well, it is true that I loved the Monkees. I had all of their albums, and all the Monkee stuff little girls would buy. I remember Ramaine and I found white bell bottom pants that had the pictures of the Monkees’ heads all over the pants. And we thought we were  “really tough”, which back then meant, “drop-dead gorgeous.”

 My love affair and my lies with the Monkees ended when I became a teenager and I didn’t fall in love with a famous person again until 1978. That’s when I went to see Animal House and fell in love with Tim Matheson. I was a senior in college by then, and interested in “real” guys, thank God, so Mr. Matheson would have to wait until I was divorced and in my 50′s to fall in love with him once again. Some women say Johnny Depp, some say Leonardo Dicaprio or George Clooney. I say Tim Matheson.

I threw away my little diary with the lock and key that day I came home from college. I wished that I would have just ripped those particular pages out and kept the diary. It had a lot of interesting things about the 1960′s in it.

And would have given me so many things to blog about 44 years later.

By  the way, I am meeting Tim Matheson for dinner in Pittsburgh this weekend. I may even try holding my breath when I go through the tunnel.  You believe me, right?

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