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Dispatch from my preteen diary: January 6th

Now the next installment of musings from my diary at age 11--which was a long time ago. You can see the whole series here.

From January 6th:

Today we had a sub., her name was Mrs. Auer (hour). She was big, fat, and ugly! Micheal Fettmen wrote a picture of her and it is on the bottom of the page. Doug Leaner said the head was to big!

The Canton Synfony Cortit came to school for the second time.

The frist time was about a month 1/2 ago.

That's all for now!

Obviously, there was no spell-check on my diary (and I'm not sure I'm all that better of a speller now).

Forgetting about poor Mrs. Auer for a moment (I'm sure she'd be thrilled to know the lingering affect she had on her students, as well as her legacy here), the Canton Symphony paid a recurring role in my youth.

For a small Midwestern town, Canton actually had a pretty kick ass symphony orchestra. Odd, I know, but true. Even more odd, the Symphony's concert space, Umstattd Hall, which was also the auditorium and theater for our high school. Again, the space was much better than you'd expect.

Anyhow, as part of their deal with the school system, the Symphony would perform in schools and provide free tickets to students. These freebies were always for Monday night concerts (the most lightly attended) and would always be in the first few rows.

I was too naive to know that the first few rows of a concert hall almost always had the worst acoustics (too close to the musicians to hear the orchestra sound blend correctly--and you couldn't see very well). I didn't care, I loved it. I would go to almost ever performance for the entire season, every year. Once in awhile I would see other school kids there, but often I was the only one person sitting in the front two rows. On one or two occasions, I talked a girl into coming with me. I guess it was to demonstrate my sophistication and worldly taste.

It was the beginning of my weird relationship with classical music. My father enjoyed classical music and often played it at home. I had all this exposure to it was a kid. I worked at and eventually became the program director at a significant public radio station that aired a lot of classical music. I've often enjoyed it, but never loved it--it was never part of my DNA.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, since moving to DC I have not been to a single classical or orchestral music event, despite dozens of them taking place every day.

I'm sure I'll come back to it at some point. I always do.

Dispatch from my preteen diary: March 21st

When I was 11, I kept a diary. The effort lasted four months--an eternity for teenage boy self-revelation. You can see the whole series here.

Now, the 4th installment, from March 21st:

Today with this pen I will make my fingerprints for March 21, 1977.

This was followed by two fingerprints, labeled "left" and "right."

One of the reasons I'm a writer is that I have the gifted ability to ramble on and on about anything. I can polish up any turd. However, when I first saw this entry, I was lost as to what I could possibly say about it that might be interesting or entertaining. Not that I routinely succeed at being interesting or entertaining, but not for lack of effort.

I've run into this problem before with these diary entries. Let's be frank, rarely do eleven-year-old boys say anything particularly interesting. I don't have much to work with.

Then I got an idea, I thought I could take my fingerprint today and compare the two side-by-side. Then I could bullshit for awhile about how my fingerprint has changed: little scars and dings from "experiencing life" or whatever. However, this would require that I find a blank piece of paper, an ink pad, grab the scanner out of the closet, take the fingerprint, scan it, and upload it here. This is far more effort than I generally want to put into things.

First, no ink pad--so I decided to use a Sharpie instead.

Everything seemed to go great until I looked at the fingerprint from 2008 and compared it to the fingerprint from 1977.

They are the same. Seriously, they could have been done on the same day.

Look for yourself (you can click on both images for larger pics).

So now I'm sitting here with my left index finger covered in black ink. And, of course since I used a Sharpie, scrubbing just switched it from black to dark gray.

I can't wait for Katherine to wake up. I'm wondering how long she'll be up before I hear, "Um, what's up with the finger?"

Dispatch from my preteen diary: March 25th

When I was 11, I started keeping a diary. The effort lasted four months. You can see the whole series here.

Now, the 3rd installment:

It would not be hyperbolic to think that March 25th was probably one of the most significant days in my life--let alone my 11th year (spelling as written):

Today I got to new singles: One is Blinded by the Light and the other is Danceing Queen.

That was the day I bought my first records.

Now before you laugh too hard, think about the first records you bought. Okay, then.

When I first re-read this entry, I was struck by why I'd write that I bought two "new" singles--doesn't that imply there were others before it? Then I remembered why that was kinda true. While my parents coveted their James Taylor, Tom Rush, and Judy Collins albums, they had two small boxes of 45 singles from their teen days that they would let my brother and I do whatever we wanted with. If we wanted to wear the grooves off on our tiny plastic record player--go for it.

Since I thought my parents were ancient, I kinda expected their teenage singles to be what I considered to be equally ancient music: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, and the like. However, when I went through the boxes, I didn't encounter a single name I recognized. It was just stuff. Stuff that my parents probably heard on the radio, liked, and bought. No worries about street cred.

My brother and I didn't care if we knew the music or artists, we just played them for fun. I can even still hum a few of the melodies and recite the lyrics--even though I have no idea who wrote or sang them. Every once in awhile I Google some of the lyrics hoping to find out what they are. Nothing yet.

Well, after listening to the boxes of 45s for a few years, I decided to do exactly what may parents had done: I picked a few things I liked from the radio, took my allowance down to the record store, and bought my two favorites. I also was completely unconcerned with street cred, I just liked the songs.

These two were just the beginning of my long dependency on and love affair with music. I still buy a lot of music today--I've bought 96 albums so far in 2008 (and yes, I am the type of person who keeps track of these things). Some albums I'm on my sixth or seventh copies because I've worn them out, spontaneously given them away, or lost them as I traveled around. Every few weeks I discover something I love just as much as I loved "Dancing Queen" back then. I guess as long as that keeps happening, I'll know that I'm still vibrant and alive.

I have no idea where those two singles ended up. But I have no doubt that someday my kids will find them digging through a dusty box, pull them out, and...well, first off they'd wonder what the fuck they were. (At first I thought they might make some comment about the funny looking CD--but CDs will probably be my kids' versions of 8-tracks--some odd, wildly inconvenient and outdated technology that baffles them with its utter lack of usability).

Anyhow...

Once they found the record--and figured out what a record was--they'd look at the label and have a reaction similar to their own father's reaction a generation before. "Manfred Mann? Who the *&#$@ is that?"

Dispatch from my preteen diary: January 24th

When I was 11, I started keeping a diary. The effort lasted four months. You can see the whole series here.

Now, the 2nd installment:

January 24th was obviously a big day, as testified in this day's diary entry (spelling and grammar as written):

"Today was the frist day back after our snow vaction. My rash is still very bad. Today I got in a very bad snowball fight with four girls. There names are Amy Kedwell, Tammy Span, Beth Gambone, and the for the last one her name is Kim. I do not know her last name.
That's all for now."

Obviously, the rash/snowball/girl combo was a big deal.

The aforementioned rash was first noted the day before, when I wrote that my mother bought me some "Allercream ®" lotion for it (and yes, I did include the registration symbol in my entry). According to my reporting from the previous day, the supposed source of this rash was other non-hypoallergenic skin creams.

The snowball fight girls all lived in my neighborhood. The reason that this snowball fight was a particularly noteworthy occasion was that each of these four girls had brothers at home that were also roughly my age. You can imagine the horror: each probably ran home and told their brothers that they had gang-pelted Eric Nuzum with snowballs, which would initiate endless teasing and taunting from said brothers for the foreseeable future.

The reason why I circled Tammy Span's name? I had a huge crush on her. Apparently at some point I went through the entire diary and circled every time her name was mentioned. I guess in 11-year-old parlance, that means "I like her."

That's all for now!

Dispatch from my preteen diary

Welcome to a new occasional feature here--"Dispatch from my diary."

When I was 11, my mother gave me a pocket diary for Christmas--a little 4 x 5 inch canvas to capture my daily musings.

Now, when you are 11, not a lot happens. This was reflected in my diary, where, on at least half the pages, I simply wrote "Nothing happened today." But the other days contained thrilling adventures and events!! Adventures I will share here (when I have time to scan the pages).

I was really into the diary for awhile. That is until April 22nd, when I abandoned the diary for good.

While I remember the diary, I lost track of it a few years later. When I was in my 20s, the family that bought my parents house found it stuck in the corner of a crawl space and kindly mailed it to us.

For today's installment, I decided to share my diary entry from March 20th of that year.

The entry:

"At 12:43 today it was spring time. Before it, we had bad weather and after it was worst."

As you can see, this entry noted the deep irony involved in crappy weather on the first day of spring. Of course, at age 11, I had yet to cognate that Ohio weather sucks about 361 days a year.

March 20th was also my parents' wedding anniversary. Much like cyclical weather patterns, this seemed to be an event far beyond my 11-year-old interest or concern.

I wonder if, someday, I will post entries on this blog about the blog entries I did years before. Given my limited range of topics to discuss (dog poop, midgets, and vomit can only yield so much material), it will probably happen sooner rather than later. In fact, I'm already planning the blog post about this blog post.

Coming up in the next installment: January 24th!!