OJAI MAGAZINE | SPRING 2021
129
in a shoe box D
o you remember where you were last year on this date? Do you remember what you did that day? Did you go to work? Did you travel somewhere? Were you sick? Did you go out that night, or did you stay home and watch TV? Well, like most people, you probably remember where you were, but don’t have a clue about the rest of it. Unless that day was a holiday or your birthday or some other momentous occasion there is just no way to distinguish that date from all the other days. I don’t mean to brag, but I can tell you exactly where I was and what I did a year ago today. Or five years ago for that matter. Or 10 years, or even 40 years ago. Pick a day. Any day. I’ll tell you where I was, what I had for breakfast, where I went, who I was with, and what I did all day long. I’ll tell you what the weather was like if it was dramatic, and what I did that evening and what time I went to bed. No, I do not have an eidetic or photographic memory. I have a shoe box. I have a shoe box with 44 diaries inside. Whoa. You may wonder how in the world I got 44 diaries to fit inside one shoe box. You might surmise I either have extremely large feet, or that my diaries are very small. The second guess would be the better one. Most of my 44 diaries measure a mere four inches high, two and a half inches wide, and three-eighths of an inch thick. By carefully placing them cover to cover, in two long parallel rows along the bottom, and by then stacking the remaining diaries flat above them, it is indeed possible to get all 44 diaries inside one shoe box with room to spare.
If you were to randomly open one of these small one-year diaries you would find that the two pages displayed would show one week. You would find small printing from a fine-point mechanical pencil filling the five lined spaces allotted for each day. These small notations would be short phrases separated from each other by a slash. Activities would be cited, along with the times, places and names of people. What I ate or drank is noted. To save space there would be numerous abbreviations. You would find odd symbols like an asterisk or a square or a circle or an X. Each symbol, of course, would have its own meaning. In this way I am able to record almost everything I did on any particular day in less than two square inches of space. You might be asking yourself why anyone would want to do such a thing. I mean like, “Who the hell cares what you did all day?” Right? I’ve given a lot of thought to this question lately as I sit here contemplating the shoe box containing a detailed record of my life for almost half a century. It wasn’t an easy task to accomplish, you know. What value does it have after all? And, yes, who really cares? Well, I’ve come up with some answers for you and me. But first, let’s talk a little more about the diary. I usually write in my diary at the end of the day when I’m lying in my bed before going to sleep. I find it’s easier to remember what I did then, rather than waiting till morning. In the morning I will have undoubtedly forgotten a few things. I am also more likely to be thinking ahead and in a hurry to be up and about and embarked on the new day.
It usually takes me from five to seven minutes to record what I did on any given day. I estimate I spend about 40 minutes a week writing in my diary. That translates into about two hours and 40 minutes a month, or roughly 32 hours a year. Think about that. That’s the equivalent of working at it for four eight-hour days. Multiply four eight-hour days times 44 years, and what do you get? 176 eight-hour days. We’re talking the equivalent of working eight-hour days every day for almost six months. That’s a half of a year of my life! “Why the hell bother?” you continue to wonder, somewhat ingenuously. Don’t worry, we’ll come to that. I was 30 years old when I began keeping a diary. I don’t remember exactly why. Most likely it was because I thought I had had a fairly interesting life up until that point and regretted not having a record of it. At the daunting age of 30 I bemoaned the fact that my youth was a thing of the past. I remember thinking of myself as over the hill, as an old man. Ha. And I regretted not having some record of those tumultuous years of my often misspent youth. In rare sentimental moments I wanted to relive some of them. But of course I knew I couldn’t. I could never go back and recapture those days for I could only remember a fraction of them. I had forgotten much more than I could ever possibly remember. Sound familiar? I decided the only thing I could do now was to go forward. I perhaps suspected I might still have an interesting life in the years to come. Maybe I wanted to start a diary at 30 so that as a truly old man I would be able to look back and