Retro daily life: Blue Diary (age 12) - Part One
What was happening during this time: I was kicked out of school, just in time for an early summer vacation.
Background to my retro daily life entries
* * * 6 May 1975: School suspension.
On my birthday I got the record "Out of Sight," which I'm listening to right now. It has "You Little Trustmaker" on it. We also went to [the ice cream parlor] Farrell's.
I've had trouble in school, and I'm suspended right now. I tried going this morning, but I got mad because I couldn't bring my tape recorder. It would take too long to tell you what happened, but I spoiled my morning and scared a girl out of her wits by throwing my notebook down on the floor just as she turned the corner. I'll never forget her expression as long as I live.
[And indeed, I still remember her expression. How the suspension happened is this: Because I didn't get along with my teacher (for various reasons), I'd been causing all sorts of problems for her, driving her to the point of distraction. While I was in line one day, I got into an argument with a classmate, whom I called a witch. Mishearing me, she quickly told the teacher that I'd called her a bitch. (I had to ask my mother afterwards what the word meant.) The teacher's patience broke; she started screaming at me, and at some point, I ended up flung against a wall. A quick-witted student fetched the student counselor; the counselor, upon grasping the situation, shouted to the teacher to let me go. I promptly fled school.
My mother tried to persuade me to return to school by telling me that I could show off my dancing (of which I was very proud, as you can tell from an earlier entry). So I trotted to school with my tape recording of "You Little Trustmaker," ready to dance for my classmates (and hopefully make a few friends). However, upon arrival, I was told the sensible rule that students weren't allowed to bring tape recorders into the classroom. I promptly threw a fit and was suspended.]
* * * 6 July 1975: The Fourth of July and the Beatles.
I stayed at home on the Fourth of July to watch The Yellow Submarine. I'm on a Beatles kick. It came because there were three Beatles specials that week. I saw the first movie the Beatles ever made. It was crazy. All the girls were screaming (And I mean screaming! Some of the girls fainted!) so hard that I'm surprised they could hear the concert at all! (Mother told me that when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show - their first appearance in America - everybody was screaming so loud that Ed had to keep coming out to tell them to be quiet, nobody can hear, why don't you give me a break and quietly listen to them, and for God's sake be quiet!
Ed didn't know that this was the beginning of a national screaming contest featuring the Beatles.
There were grown-ups there too. I bet they came to get their kids and when they saw how great the music was they decided to stay.
I taped all the songs in The Yellow Submarine. My favorite was All the Lonely People. I'm listening to it right now.
The fireworks started during the last half of the program. Every time a "bomb" burst the whole house would shake. After the program I rushed out and watched the rest of the fireworks. Afterwards we had chocolate cake. It was delicious.
* * * 29 July 1975: A hubristic child-writer's goals; plus, my family, and a description of my family's favorite toy, namely our electronic typesetter.
I have just finished reading Anne Frank. It's the most moving book I've ever read. For the first time in my life [I cried]. I've cried over movies, yes, but books never.
Anyway, I've been thinking. The book is a diary (the diary of a young girl, to be exact), and I've noticed that Anne put a lot more detail in that I do, so I'm going to make up for it by telling you everything.
My name is HEP and at the moment I'm 12 years old. I'm going into seventh grade and I live at [the same house that I live in today, thirty-four years later], Greenbelt, Md., 20770, U.S., North America, North and West Hemisphere, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Universe.
I will go into the details later, but I wanted to tell you my most innermost secrets while they're still fresh on my mind.
If you look around (and I find that adults find that very hard to do) you'll see that signatures of famous writers such as Dickens or Carroll are hard to come by. So they are worth a whole lot of money, more than I'd care to mention. (And I bet even if they weren't scarce, they'd be worth a lot.) Manuscripts, letters, doodles to pass the time of day away with. All are worth thousands, even millions. Even the brown shoelace from the left workshoe of Dickens cost $300.
Anyway, as I'm to be a famous writer someday (I hope) I'm saving my things up. (In other words I'm a packrat, as my mother would say.)
But that's not all. All famous writers seem to have their dairies published (you'll be famous some day, Bub!) and biographies written about them (even my own father has written a biography on Browning). It seems a pity that the one person who knows the most about me would be dead (yours truly). So I'm going to write sort of an annotated book of my diary just as if I was dead and someone else (just for fun, of course) as soon as this diary is finished.
When my cousins came they delivered to me a photo album and a five year diary. I hope you don't mind. You'll always be my favorite since were my first diary!
I'm going to be a child-writer, and I'm writing a book right now which I hope to get published. It's a light humored fairy-tale. It's called The Princess and the Cream Pies. I have written (or rather, started writing) hundreds of stories, and I keep them all in a drawer. The stack is a good six inches. One of my favorites is my L-6 stories.
Now to describe the family.
My father is an English teacher at the University of Maryland. He is also the author of Interrogating the Oracle (published by the Ohio University Press) and Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: An Annotated Bibliography 1951-1970 (published by the Browning Institute) and a recently accepted book (which I can't name) of five years research (published by Lester Publishing Company).
He is on the Browning Institute's board of directors (a vice-president I believe) and has edited the first and second edition of Browning Institute Studies and is not only editing but typesetting the 1975 edition. Mother's typing it with one of the two typewriters we're renting. [Actually, it was an early electronic typesetter, the Quadritek 1200.] It's wonderful. It is gray and has an ordinary keyboard. On the right is a contraption that looks like this: [See the illustration below.] The 3's background is black; the 4's is blue; the 5's is orange; the 6's green; the 7's white; the 8's red; the 9's yellow.
Both the outer and inner dials are movable, and the knob on the right slides back and forth.
Left of the contraption is the on and off switch. Above it are two switches, one saying CHAR B/S, the other saying INDEX. The left looks like this: [See the illustration above.]
On the front is a complicated system, too complicated to explain.
Now, here comes the catch. This typewriter is computerized!
Not only that but it can type any style on Earth!
This is how it works.
There are hundreds of balls of type which can be connected to the typewriter. You think there aren't that many types in the world? Well, my father has a 137 page book just showing type faces of the alphabet. Forget Mathematical, Technical, Greek, Latin, etc., etc. Easy to run? Not at all. Daddy has a 111 page manual just to teach him how to run the darn thing!
Daddy is around six feet tall (I'm not sure of the exact height). He has dark, dark brown hair, and the same color beard and mustache. Glenn has never seen Daddy without them, but I remember. That was before everything went wrong. [Now] he worries too much, never plays with me anymore, and gets real mad if I upset Mother. (Did he ever think how she upset me? Of course not. I'm always the bad little child.)
[I think "everything went wrong" was a reference to my delinquent behavior. In any case, it's clear from the entries in my Blue Diary that my father and I were having a good many amicable encounters during 1975.]
Mother is 38 (I forgot to tell you Daddy is 36), approximately 5 foot 4, and a housewife.
Grandma and Grandpa Lester divorced when Mother was little and Mother lived with her Grandma Thompson most of her childhood (the only Great-Grandmother I ever saw) and even lived with foster parents for a while (they sure have a neat pony).
At the moment, Mother is getting ready for a vacation with Daddy to the East Coast. Grandma, who's come from Rochester to stay with us for a month, is going to take care of us. (Huzzah! Ice cream, candy bars, colas, T.V., rock-and-roll music! Mother's not only giving herself a vacation, but she's giving us one too.)
Glenn has dirty, dirty, dirty blond hair. (If it gets any dirtier, he'll have to wash it!) He's 4 foot something (as my grandmother put it).
* * * 1976: "Brain" (early fictionalized autobiography).
[Written at age thirteen, probably soon after my birthday.]
Afterwards, I wasn't exactly sure when Brain arrived. Probably around April [1975], when I changed schools. I knew that Brain was there when I was suspended, and when I was in the psychological section of Holy Cross Hospital.
He came in the form of my conscience at first, and told me to do or not do this and that. Then he evolved into all of my mind, and his duties now also included running my body and emotions. That was all.
But as time went along, a close relationship [grew] between us, and Brain became more of a companion and partner than a commander. . . .
"Misery," I said, "is when you study for weeks and weeks for an important exam, and then get a zero because you wrote in pencil instead of ink."
"Misery," said Brain, "is when a little child by the name of HEP won't shut up and go to sleep."
I turned over. "I have insomnia, you know that."
"Seems to be you're using this insomnia bit as an excuse," [replied] Brain.
There was a small silence. Then in a small voice, "Anyway, I'm not a little child."
"Of course not. That's why you don't put away your dirty socks."
"That's why you don't remind me."
"Touché."
I reached [to turn on] the light.
"Oops!" [said Brain]. "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
"Early to bed, early to rise, makes that man miss the late, late show."
"My, you do have a way with words, don't you?"
"Maybe if you'd shut up, I could get some sleep!"
Background to my retro daily life entries
* * * 6 May 1975: School suspension.
On my birthday I got the record "Out of Sight," which I'm listening to right now. It has "You Little Trustmaker" on it. We also went to [the ice cream parlor] Farrell's.
I've had trouble in school, and I'm suspended right now. I tried going this morning, but I got mad because I couldn't bring my tape recorder. It would take too long to tell you what happened, but I spoiled my morning and scared a girl out of her wits by throwing my notebook down on the floor just as she turned the corner. I'll never forget her expression as long as I live.
[And indeed, I still remember her expression. How the suspension happened is this: Because I didn't get along with my teacher (for various reasons), I'd been causing all sorts of problems for her, driving her to the point of distraction. While I was in line one day, I got into an argument with a classmate, whom I called a witch. Mishearing me, she quickly told the teacher that I'd called her a bitch. (I had to ask my mother afterwards what the word meant.) The teacher's patience broke; she started screaming at me, and at some point, I ended up flung against a wall. A quick-witted student fetched the student counselor; the counselor, upon grasping the situation, shouted to the teacher to let me go. I promptly fled school.
My mother tried to persuade me to return to school by telling me that I could show off my dancing (of which I was very proud, as you can tell from an earlier entry). So I trotted to school with my tape recording of "You Little Trustmaker," ready to dance for my classmates (and hopefully make a few friends). However, upon arrival, I was told the sensible rule that students weren't allowed to bring tape recorders into the classroom. I promptly threw a fit and was suspended.]
* * * 6 July 1975: The Fourth of July and the Beatles.
I stayed at home on the Fourth of July to watch The Yellow Submarine. I'm on a Beatles kick. It came because there were three Beatles specials that week. I saw the first movie the Beatles ever made. It was crazy. All the girls were screaming (And I mean screaming! Some of the girls fainted!) so hard that I'm surprised they could hear the concert at all! (Mother told me that when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show - their first appearance in America - everybody was screaming so loud that Ed had to keep coming out to tell them to be quiet, nobody can hear, why don't you give me a break and quietly listen to them, and for God's sake be quiet!
Ed didn't know that this was the beginning of a national screaming contest featuring the Beatles.
There were grown-ups there too. I bet they came to get their kids and when they saw how great the music was they decided to stay.
I taped all the songs in The Yellow Submarine. My favorite was All the Lonely People. I'm listening to it right now.
The fireworks started during the last half of the program. Every time a "bomb" burst the whole house would shake. After the program I rushed out and watched the rest of the fireworks. Afterwards we had chocolate cake. It was delicious.
* * * 29 July 1975: A hubristic child-writer's goals; plus, my family, and a description of my family's favorite toy, namely our electronic typesetter.
I have just finished reading Anne Frank. It's the most moving book I've ever read. For the first time in my life [I cried]. I've cried over movies, yes, but books never.
Anyway, I've been thinking. The book is a diary (the diary of a young girl, to be exact), and I've noticed that Anne put a lot more detail in that I do, so I'm going to make up for it by telling you everything.
My name is HEP and at the moment I'm 12 years old. I'm going into seventh grade and I live at [the same house that I live in today, thirty-four years later], Greenbelt, Md., 20770, U.S., North America, North and West Hemisphere, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Universe.
I will go into the details later, but I wanted to tell you my most innermost secrets while they're still fresh on my mind.
If you look around (and I find that adults find that very hard to do) you'll see that signatures of famous writers such as Dickens or Carroll are hard to come by. So they are worth a whole lot of money, more than I'd care to mention. (And I bet even if they weren't scarce, they'd be worth a lot.) Manuscripts, letters, doodles to pass the time of day away with. All are worth thousands, even millions. Even the brown shoelace from the left workshoe of Dickens cost $300.
Anyway, as I'm to be a famous writer someday (I hope) I'm saving my things up. (In other words I'm a packrat, as my mother would say.)
But that's not all. All famous writers seem to have their dairies published (you'll be famous some day, Bub!) and biographies written about them (even my own father has written a biography on Browning). It seems a pity that the one person who knows the most about me would be dead (yours truly). So I'm going to write sort of an annotated book of my diary just as if I was dead and someone else (just for fun, of course) as soon as this diary is finished.
When my cousins came they delivered to me a photo album and a five year diary. I hope you don't mind. You'll always be my favorite since were my first diary!
I'm going to be a child-writer, and I'm writing a book right now which I hope to get published. It's a light humored fairy-tale. It's called The Princess and the Cream Pies. I have written (or rather, started writing) hundreds of stories, and I keep them all in a drawer. The stack is a good six inches. One of my favorites is my L-6 stories.
Now to describe the family.
My father is an English teacher at the University of Maryland. He is also the author of Interrogating the Oracle (published by the Ohio University Press) and Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: An Annotated Bibliography 1951-1970 (published by the Browning Institute) and a recently accepted book (which I can't name) of five years research (published by Lester Publishing Company).
He is on the Browning Institute's board of directors (a vice-president I believe) and has edited the first and second edition of Browning Institute Studies and is not only editing but typesetting the 1975 edition. Mother's typing it with one of the two typewriters we're renting. [Actually, it was an early electronic typesetter, the Quadritek 1200.] It's wonderful. It is gray and has an ordinary keyboard. On the right is a contraption that looks like this: [See the illustration below.] The 3's background is black; the 4's is blue; the 5's is orange; the 6's green; the 7's white; the 8's red; the 9's yellow.
Both the outer and inner dials are movable, and the knob on the right slides back and forth.
Left of the contraption is the on and off switch. Above it are two switches, one saying CHAR B/S, the other saying INDEX. The left looks like this: [See the illustration above.]
On the front is a complicated system, too complicated to explain.
Now, here comes the catch. This typewriter is computerized!
Not only that but it can type any style on Earth!
This is how it works.
There are hundreds of balls of type which can be connected to the typewriter. You think there aren't that many types in the world? Well, my father has a 137 page book just showing type faces of the alphabet. Forget Mathematical, Technical, Greek, Latin, etc., etc. Easy to run? Not at all. Daddy has a 111 page manual just to teach him how to run the darn thing!
Daddy is around six feet tall (I'm not sure of the exact height). He has dark, dark brown hair, and the same color beard and mustache. Glenn has never seen Daddy without them, but I remember. That was before everything went wrong. [Now] he worries too much, never plays with me anymore, and gets real mad if I upset Mother. (Did he ever think how she upset me? Of course not. I'm always the bad little child.)
[I think "everything went wrong" was a reference to my delinquent behavior. In any case, it's clear from the entries in my Blue Diary that my father and I were having a good many amicable encounters during 1975.]
Mother is 38 (I forgot to tell you Daddy is 36), approximately 5 foot 4, and a housewife.
Grandma and Grandpa Lester divorced when Mother was little and Mother lived with her Grandma Thompson most of her childhood (the only Great-Grandmother I ever saw) and even lived with foster parents for a while (they sure have a neat pony).
At the moment, Mother is getting ready for a vacation with Daddy to the East Coast. Grandma, who's come from Rochester to stay with us for a month, is going to take care of us. (Huzzah! Ice cream, candy bars, colas, T.V., rock-and-roll music! Mother's not only giving herself a vacation, but she's giving us one too.)
Glenn has dirty, dirty, dirty blond hair. (If it gets any dirtier, he'll have to wash it!) He's 4 foot something (as my grandmother put it).
* * * 1976: "Brain" (early fictionalized autobiography).
[Written at age thirteen, probably soon after my birthday.]
Afterwards, I wasn't exactly sure when Brain arrived. Probably around April [1975], when I changed schools. I knew that Brain was there when I was suspended, and when I was in the psychological section of Holy Cross Hospital.
He came in the form of my conscience at first, and told me to do or not do this and that. Then he evolved into all of my mind, and his duties now also included running my body and emotions. That was all.
But as time went along, a close relationship [grew] between us, and Brain became more of a companion and partner than a commander. . . .
"Misery," I said, "is when you study for weeks and weeks for an important exam, and then get a zero because you wrote in pencil instead of ink."
"Misery," said Brain, "is when a little child by the name of HEP won't shut up and go to sleep."
I turned over. "I have insomnia, you know that."
"Seems to be you're using this insomnia bit as an excuse," [replied] Brain.
There was a small silence. Then in a small voice, "Anyway, I'm not a little child."
"Of course not. That's why you don't put away your dirty socks."
"That's why you don't remind me."
"Touché."
I reached [to turn on] the light.
"Oops!" [said Brain]. "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
"Early to bed, early to rise, makes that man miss the late, late show."
"My, you do have a way with words, don't you?"
"Maybe if you'd shut up, I could get some sleep!"
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