Love in Dark Settings

What was happening during this time: Just a few items of everyday life.

Background to my retro daily life entries


* * * 30 July 1975: Trespassing.

[The reference in this entry was to our tenant, who lived downstairs. Why was I using the downstairs bathroom? Because that was the only way I could get away with reading after I was supposed to be in bed, with the lights out. I had chronic insomnia all through my childhood, and some idiot doctor told my mother not to let me read in bed. My mother invariably detected when I was reading in bed or in the upstairs bathroom; hence my foray downstairs.]

I feel awful!

I was in the downstairs bathroom reading Anne Frank at about one o'clock [a.m.] today. I was just coming out when suddenly Malcolm came in! I stood behind the door, trying to think of what to do. So I said, "Hi!"

Malcolm jumped out of his skin. He mumbled "Excuse me," and started to go out. I said, "Excuse me," and walked into the study, where I am now.

* * * 3 September 1975: Kid power.

Daddy got me a book called Small Voices. It is (as it says on the cover) "A Grown-up's Treasury of Selections from the Diaries, Journals and Notebooks of Young Children." "Young Children," indeed! Some of them were 11 or 12, and I'm not a "Young Child"!

* * * 9 September 1975: Questions about death.

I had a thought last night. Does you brain stop working when you die? In most cases the brain isn't affected when the person dies. If the person was to come alive again would his brain still be working? When a person dies, even if he can't move anything, can he still think (and see, if his eyes happen to be open)? I must think about this.

* * * 9 September 1975: Neighborhood kids.

I was at the Jamesons' today, playing Bingo with Steven, Lee, and Kevin when Kevin and I had to come home. As we walked home Kevin made excuses so I wouldn't come in. First it was "The pinball machine is broken," then, "We're having company." "You betcha [you] are," I replied.

When we got to his house, Kevin said, "I've got something that'll get you away!" and he breathed on me and dashed inside. I rapped on the window, saying, "Alms for the poor! Alms for the poor!" Kevin opened the door, saying, "Be quiet! You're scaring the bird!" Oh, well. Tomorrow's another day.

* * * 12 September 1975: Book dedications and our car.

I've been thinking about dedications. Of books, I mean. Daddy says they go back a long time. He says some of Shakespeare's plays were dedicated. That was about 250 years ago. [A little bit more than that, actually . . .] There wasn't any dedication in Bambi and Bambi's Children ([I own the] first editions we think), nor in my Laura Ingalls Wilder series, but there was in The Story of Doctor Dolittle, though.

Dedications are sometimes dedicated to a large group in general, such as all the children in the world. I remember reading one book where it was dedicated to the character in the story. But most books are dedicated to friends or relatives or people who made this book possible. I'm different. I think the people in the dedication should have to do with the book itself. For instance, The Secret Garden is dedicated to Alise and Michael Moretti, the main characters of the story, and Alison, the cousin in the story. The story I've promised Tina is dedicated to Cortina, my favorite car.

[Our family owned a Ford Cortina, which we had bought in England in 1969. I wept when my family finally exchanged it for a more up-to-date car. Nor was I alone in such sentiments. When the Cortina was taken out of production in Britain during my late teens, a British television show was dedicated to it; in one scene, viewers saw a man weeping at a pub counter, choking out the words: "I just can't believe she's gone." ]