“Nothing happened today” are very sad words for a teenager. Being an adolescent suggests something important must occur each and every day. Surveys tell us how young adults text, snap, tweet and message one another 24/7. It’s even essential to transmit photos of what they are about to eat.
Seven decades ago, technology did not exist to document these desires, these needs, but they occurred, none-the-less. Instead, personal events were recorded in diaries, a method going back to Samuel Pepys in the 17th century, if not even to the time when “all of Gaul is divided into three parts.”
My own efforts began, formally, on January 1, 1951, when I was fifteen and a sophomore in high school. Each day there were notations on classes I took and kids I knew; mostly on those I envied, because they always seemed to be “doing” more than I could and were involved with friends I lacked. My own life beyond classes and attendance at basketball games included movies I went to several times a week.
Visits from aunts, uncles and cousins merited comment. More frequently, I went to my paternal grandparent’s home, which I found to be very boring. There’s not much enjoyment in listening to full-volume arguments in Italian when you don’t understand the language, even if the body speaks very eloquently, especially during games of pinochle or hearts.
In addition to visits and battles with relatives, the entries included comments on stamps I bought from the Post Office or from the Jamestown Stamp Company. My other hobby was writing to foreign pen-pals in England, Germany, France and Sweden. What a treasure it would be if only I had kept them, the letters; I still have the stamps.
An even greater treasure would have been if I had made personal comments about worldly events, such as two occurring that fall. Without elaboration, I noted I had listened to the signing of the Japanese Peace Treaty in San Francisco on September 8. Shortly afterwards there was another note about the peace treaty talks beginning on October 24 at a place called Panmunjom , or as I had spelled it: Panmunjun. Instead, I was more inclined to record receiving the latest copy of Open Road, a monthly, teen-magazine, costing ten cents. How I longed for my own “open road!”
The beginning of my make-believe adventure is mentioned for June 26: “Keys of Murder.” An ageing, yellowed-page copy of this uncompleted mystery I began writing that year is probably buried in some box in my closet. Although events, personal and public, were occurring, they held no validity for me. As far as I was concerned, “Nothing happened today.”
In the teen-years to follow, this phrase became almost a daily reference in my high school diaries. There are days when the words were repeated in fancy twirls or strangely formed letters to fill up the vacant space. Back then, the unquiet reader in me wanted a life like the ones lived by Tom Sawyer, the Hardy Boys, and the heroes found in Ellery Queen mysteries, e.g., The Chinese Orange or The Siamese Twin.
Yes, events, real and imaginary, comprised my daily life. It’s possible to visualize them as fog, itself, or objects fogged in by other mists, being alone or being lonely, with all of life ahead of me or all of life behind me. The events of my life can be tasted, in memory, with sweetness or with bitterness. They may be salty or bland. Everything depends upon the truth of the conclusion: “nothing happened today.”