"Everyone knows not to pay any attention to another's first two parents, wives, and lobotomies. Why, then, do we persist in paying any attention at all to another's first two journal entries?" - Socrates, as recorded in the third journal entry of his good friend, Skippy
Third
time's the charm. Really. The bugs have been worked out.
The hang of it has been gotten. THIS is the entry the first
one would have been had it lived so long.
I can say that because
I've been doing a little journal research in the interim and now have a
better grasp of my strengths and weaknesses. Did you know, for example,
that The First American Heritage College Dictionary With 'Tude defines
a journal as "A personal record of occurrences, experiences, and reflections
kept on a regular basis; see diary, dumbass!" Suddenly, everything
seems so much clearer than it was before. I had begun to suspect
that my problem was the utter absence of occurrences, experiences, and
reflection in my life. What a relief to discover that I'm merely
a dumbass.
Continuing my research,
I learned that perhaps the most famous diary in all of history is the one
which was kept by Samuel Pepys between 1660 and 1669. Unfortunately,
I do not have a copy of it to study even though Pepys and I share the same
February birthday. On the bright side, however, I happen to co-habitate
with an English teacher who took the time last night to inform me at great
length that Pepys name is actually pronounced "Peeps." While not
quite as startling as my learning earlier in the day that a Julio Iglesias
CD might actually show up unannounced at my door, this additional revelation
nonetheless did rattle me in my already weakened condition. It was
bad enough to discover that my own diary was not the most famous
in all of history. How much worse it was to know that whenever the
author of what is the most famous diary walked into a room full of
chicks, none would be able to resist calling out his name!
Well, Pepys might have written the most famous diary, but I think it would be edged out at the Oscars by one entitled "The Diary Of Adam And Eve" if the Oscars were given to the year's best movies and/or diaries. And "The Diary Of Adam And Eve" actually existed. I can't do anything to change the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences' antiquated rules, of course, but it gives me great pleasure to reveal that "The Diary Of Adam And Eve" really has been written. In fact, here are its first two (often ignored) entries as penned by Adam:
Monday - This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don't like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals.... Cloudy today, windy in the east; think we shall have rain.... We? Where did I get that word? - I remember now - the new creature uses it.
Tuesday - Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls - why, I am sure I do not know. She says it looks like Niagara Falls. That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no chance to name anything myself. The new creature names everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest. And always the same pretext is offered - it looks like the thing. There is the dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." It will have to keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.
It goes without saying that the third entry is where things get really interesting. But don't take my word for it - just check with the archeologist who first discovered this work, Mark Twain. That is, unless I'm mistaken in my assumption that this is all in the public domain now. In that case, my attorney assures me that it was my firm belief that the librarian who freely passed these words along to me made them up himself.
Two other famous diaries
come to mind.
First, "Diary Of A
Mad Housewife" by Sue Kaufman - which I refuse to mention further because
it took the title I wanted to use.
Second, "The Diary
Of Anne Frank."
Now, here's a surprise:
Not even I am about to make fun of a work written by a young girl brutally
murdered by the Nazis. And I cannot begin to express the shock I
felt when my good friend, Dr. David Adams, did, in fact, make fun of it
one night when we were having dinner at the House of Hunan Chinese restaurant.
I leave it to the reader to imagine the great difficulty I had in continuing
to swallow my chicken stir fry (with extra baby corn) as this otherwise
fine man and college professor told me of a student who had once turned
in a book report about "The Dairy Of Anne Frank." "For years
afterward," he chortled, "I wondered: How did they ever get all those damn
cows up those stairs and into the hidden garret with nobody knowing?!"
Sure, I smiled - sickly,
and out of politeness. But I was crying on the inside. And
not just because the others at our table may have found this "true" tale
of his more amusing than my own on-the-fly description during a previous
meal of a new EuroDisney show entitled "The Rise And Fall Of The Third
Reich On Ice!"
I've blown it again,
haven't I?
Damn.
(All Material Not An Obvious Rip-Off Of Some Other Aspect Of Western Civilization © 1999 by Dan Birtcher)
