Dear Diary....

I took out my old diary today.  It has been in my nightstand drawer for many years.

        It was given to me from my mom for Christmas in 1970.
        I began writing in the beginning of 1971.
        I was 11 years old at the time.

It was a 5 year diary, so it didn't give you much space to write.  Four lines.  I was reading a few entries to my daughter, Annie, tonight and we were laughing at what I chose to write in those four lines.  It was like looking into the mind of an 11 - 16 year old.  I was 12 when my mom gave me a purple skirt for Christmas that I really didn't like, but pretended to wear it proudly to school because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.  That was obviously the most memorable part of my day.  That's a 12 year old for you!

 What intrigued me the most about the diary was the stitching that held two pages together.  I never knew when my brother or sisters might find my diary and read it, so I needed to make sure whatever was written on these pages was only seen by MY EYES.  So I did a nice blanket stitch around the edge and finished it off with a little flower in the corner. 

Whatever I wrote was REALLY PRIVATE.
It has not been read in 40 YEARS  (1971) since I stitched it up!

 I know what it was about, but I really want to see how my 11 year old self put it into words!

SO TONIGHT I CUT THE THREAD.

I had written the entry with a pencil and many of the words were barely readable.  So I put on my reading glasses and got to work.  The words might have been faded from all of the tears that probably fell on these pages as I was writing.
I REMEMBER THE TEARS!
It felt weird to write again over the words that I wrote 40 years ago in the hand of an 11 year old.
I carefully traced over the faded letters.


I remember being terribly sad for a LONG time.
And I remember being embarrassed that I was so sad.
Hence, the stitching. 
What was I so sad about?

When I was 11, my favorite TV show was "Alias Smith and Jones". It was a western about 2 famous bank robbers struggling to go straight, using the alias of Smith and Jones.  Every week they got into crazy adventures where their identities were constantly in danger of being discovered by the law. Their real names were Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry.   Looking back, it was probably influenced by the popular Redford/Newman movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".

Peter Duel played Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy played Kid Curry.  I loved them both, but I had a MAJOR crush on Peter Duel.  Dark hair, dark eyes, big smile, dimples  - he was the whole package. As far as I was concerned, he was the perfect man.

When my mother told me he had died and then later found out it was suicide,  I WAS DEVASTATED! He shot himself in the head!

I couldn't get him off my mind and my 11 year old self could not comprehend why someone so perfect would take his own life!  In my own little world, I had been in love with him and he was gone!  I remember being depressed for weeks and going into my room to cry often.  But I didn't want anyone to know how sad I was, so I hid it and I stitched the pages together.

 

Looking at what I wrote,  it really wasn't so incriminating.  It was nothing to be embarrassed about. The words do not reflect what I was feeling inside.

He was adorable!  And he was gone!  My     heart      was     broken!   I did recover eventually.  I went on to have crushes on many other men.
My final real-life crush was on another dark haired, dark eyed man with a big smile.......my husband.