On This Day: Your History

[ER]

March 25:

1992 Rainy day, painted coffee beans with my mom.

1993: Packed to go to a three-day school retreat for 8th grade girls, run by nuns.

1994: Saw The Hudsucker Proxy with a boy from my geometry class named Ethan.

1996: My best friend’s brother came over and watched Braveheart sweep the Oscars.

1997: Stayed with my grandpa over almost all of spring break.

1998: Helped my friend Karen make a care package for her fiancé, in jail for dealing marijuana. (She’s a friend I have simply lost track of over the years.)

2003: Landon said he was once in a shop that had old yearbooks, and in a 1980 annual someone scribbled over the eyes of every blond girl in the senior class, sometimes deep enough to tear the paper. I called to try to buy that yearbook, but no luck.

2006: Saw George Carlin amid late-spring snow.

2010: In Rio, on our honeymoon. Honestly, I don’t recommend Brazil.

2014: An intern named Emily lifted her sweater to show us the Victoria’s Secret bra she was wearing.

2015: Told about a slave cemetery in Kentucky near where we lived when I was little that had a headstone from 1850 that read: Thomas, No Truer Friend A Christian Had/But One Master Serves He Now In Heaven. I suspect some odd social relationships arose out of slavery.

[ER]

March 26:

1997: The Heaven’s Gate mass suicide was such a big story it was even used as a cautionary tale in my 12th grade AP Theology class.

1998: Lemme just say I was there for a particularly memorable day in someone’s life.

1999 Saw Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and didn’t like it all that much. (Snatch would be much better.)

2003: Babysat 3 ½ year old Tyler, who drew penises on Donald Duck and Goofy and darn near every character in his Disney coloring book. We were just shocked in the future when he told us he was gay.

2009: My dad told me he was going to get married, and for once, not to my mom.

2015: My grandmother wrote everyone in the family an email angry that the skeleton of Richard III was given a Protestant funeral. She had a point.

2016: In a strange coincidence, on this day my dad also told me he was going to divorce his wife of seven years, and I didn’t think his reasons were honorable, namely yet another chance to get back together with my mom, who considered herself still canonically wed to him.

2017: In church I noticed the man I nearly married in the ‘90s had absolutely gotten his peculiar mannerism of freezing and staring while thinking hard about something, from his mom, who did the same thing right in front of my eyes, and it gave me chills to see her do that.

2018: My husband impressed me by purchasing a box of Tanith Lee books offline, including the Paradys series, one of my favorites.

2019: Tyler asked me if I had anything to do with the disappearance of a man he and his friend met off a sex app, who tried to lock them in his basement, and I said no. Years before Tyler also thought I killed my cousin Celia in Kansas, but she turned up fine. That boy lacks faith in me, I swear.

[ER]

March 27:

1994: Talked to Brian in Michigan. Told him I watched Badlands, per his recommendation, and it didn’t do much for me, but we agreed The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye both sucked.

1996: While I no longer confessed, I liked to talk in the confessional to a priest at St. Xavier Church, downtown, named Father Huber; bent his ear for a long time about my life.

1997: My friend Rob brought Scream for me to see. Meh, guess I’m a tough audience.

1998: There was a boy who was utterly into me, not the person I loved, but I did like him very much, which is far less stressful, and he followed me everywhere like a puppy that weird day, and even sat one desk over from me at the university library, staring toward me with this poleaxed grin, and I was divided between wishing he’d go away, and feeling a great awkward affection for him.

2000: Gave a talk on the Irish Potato Famine, and how Ireland was producing bumper crops, but English landlords exported them while blight killed potatoes, the food staple of the rural poor, reason 5,000 the Irish hated the English. (Lesson: never be so weak that someone can exploit you.)

2001 Sick, 102-degree fever.

2003: Friend of mine I hadn’t heard from for eleven days contacted me from Najaf, Iraq to let me know he was all right. I literally jumped up and down with relief.

2005: Woke up dreaming Tony Blair had been murdered, and told everyone at Easter dinner, only to be asked if I really had to discuss that during a holiday.
 
2020: Covid rumor of the day was Boris Johnson had infected the Queen.

2022: Finished John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding According to the Chief of Sinners, proving I will read darn near anything.

[RCMerchant]

^ Do you keep a diary or something?
I can't recall what happened last week, unless it's important or made an impression. I mean, who cares about such minutia?

[ER]

I guess looking back interests me, Ron. This thread has inspired me to read diaries that were sitting on a shelf, and recall other times in my life. I don't want to impose on you, though, so if it doesn't interest you, I wouldn't be at all offended if you skipped reading it, like I skip many of the images you post for the same reason. (Though some have also been good.) If my mining of memories has bothered you, then I appreciate the fact you haven't attacked me over it. If it's ever interested you, thanks.

I hope that answers your question.

[RCMerchant]

^ Hey- if it rocks yer boat-cool! I was just curious. We did a diary a couple years when I was in english class in middle school, and it was kinda fun.

[ER]

March 29:

1993: Home from the weekend retreat with nuns, where I knelt on a cold stone chapel floor for two hours one night, optional but I was stubbornly determined to do it: one of my flaws.

1994: Met a Lithuanian guy at my mom’s night classes, who in the USSR in the ‘80s, searched out scrap metal for a year to buy a pair of black market jeans.

1995: Invited my boyfriend to dinner at my Aunt Christie’s, and he showed up looking like the clean-cut St. X type I first met, and my aunt bonded with him so deeply she ended up knowing him longer than I would.

1996: Was reading The Mists of Avalon, the only book so bad I threw it away, one of my earliest exposures to the awfulness of most feminist lit, when my friend’s brother came over mad at being dumped by his girlfriend Maisie, and I told him he and I were living out of order and skipping all sorts of stages we should probably go through. He said I was talking crazy and couldn't wait to have sex with another girl.

2001: Helped my friend Gina apply to veterinarian school at Kansas State and Alabama, hoping she wouldn’t go to either.

2008: The man I disliked most wrote me a nice email about my impending baby, and I sat and stared at the screen for an incredibly long time re-writing a seven-line reply, angry he wrote but determined not to show it.

2012 To Memorial Hall to hear Phillip Glass.

2019: Saw a Winslow Homer/Georgia O’Keefe showing, then went to the Bunbury Music Festival, and came home with my ears practically bleeding, it was so loud.

2023: Saw Jagged Little Pill the Musical, which wasn’t very good.

2024: Amid gorgeous weather, climbed the steps of the Immaculata for Good Friday, in honor of my Aunt Christie and my grandma, who did it for decades, and my daughter, who wasn’t able to be there. Here’s what it looks like from the church steps: https://www.reddit.com/r/cincinnati/comments/mgsgl5/view_from_immaculata_holy_cross_catholic_church/

[ER]

March 30:

1991 When my lab partner in pre-chemistry said, “I needa pee.” I said, “But you have the other twenty-five letters?” She didn’t get it.

1992: When we heard a clip of Bill Clinton saying he smoked marijuana but didn’t inhale, my cousin Dana turned to me and said, “That’s sounds exactly like something you’d do.”

1993: In art class we had to create pictures to go with religious quotes, and a boy asked if I dared him to quote a saint who said, “Commit not thy ass to un-Godly labor.” I said yes, so he drew a donkey and farmer from behind, bending over, butts sticking out, but our teacher had zero appreciation of great art.

1999: Near where I went to school on the east coast, I saw a bunch of police boats out on the river, and it turns out they were dragging the water for a drowned fisherman.

2018: While walking the Immaculata steps on Good Friday, I met a woman who said she was a “Torah-observant Christian.” No irony there.

2021: In my car when I felt a sting at my wrist, and realized a little black spider had bitten me. I went in and told everyone, and my youngest asked, “Did you hurt the spider?”

2022: Friend from Austin was unexpectedly in my city, and we hung out a bit while high winds turned over chairs and tables and umbrellas in the outdoor café where we were, and one woman ended up wearing her salad for makeup. Biblical, man…

[ER]

March 31:

1995: Saw a woman panhandling, so spent basically all my money buying her food. Instead of saying thanks, she said, “Got the receipt in there so I can take this s**t back for cash?” Wow.

2002: I was working in England, and heard in a laundry mat that the Queen Mother had died at 101. Called my family for a few minutes to say happy Easter, and felt abysmally down, missing home, and honestly afraid much of the time I was on that job.

2003: Landon and I took Tyler to the opening day baseball parade, then the game itself. We dropped him off and rented Blackhawk Down to watch that evening.

2005: Went to the Israeli film festival and saw Bonjour, Monsieur Shlomi.

2006: Landon and I were walking around this south bank entertainment complex when someone at the opposite end started firing a pistol into the air. Oddly nobody much reacted and a few minutes later police had to tell everyone to leave while they investigated.

2007: Woke up to see that as a consequence of my work, I was now a top-250 worldwide reviewer on Amazon, number 247, to be exact. It’s been a crazy life.

2016 EWTN was showing Mother Angelica lying in state, and when I told my mom I didn’t want to see a dead person on TV, she said death was part of life, which was one of those accidentally ironic things she says from time to time.

2019: Saw the very cool Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs museum exhibit, the largest display of Egyptian artifacts outside Egypt itself.

2021: I had an ingrown eyelash How’s that for trippy?

2023: Was showing my oldest some clips of British TV shows from the ‘80s I remembered watching in Ireland, and she wigged out and said they should bleep the word “fag” for cigarette. I said, “So it’s the word that outrages you, not the smoking, huh?”  I had to laugh, which made her huff and storm off.

[ER]

April 1:

1992: Brian gave me a lime Life Saver when I was in seventh grade, and I still have it.

1993: Boy at school brought garlic-flavored toothpaste for April Fool’s Day and smeared it on stuff, and the teacher couldn’t figure out what was stinking.

1994: As we walked the Immaculata steps on Good Friday, I made a joke about Jesus inventing the original April Fool’s Day prank, which my mom found so exceedingly unfunny she said I ought to go to confession when we got up the hill to the church.

1995 Said to my cousin Dana, “Wouldn’t it something if today my parents revealed this whole splitting up thing was an April Fool’s Day joke?” She said it’d be Andy Kaufman-level.

1996: Went to baseball’s opening day with my grandpa, and saw the umpire keel over at home plate. He wasn’t A.F.D. joking, he was really most sincerely dead. (Karma for movie-quote ID there?)

1997: My dad gave me what looked like a box of chocolates which had about a hundred live mealworms in it.

2005: The Pope’s death was reported by news outlets, but he clung to life.

2008: My godson, whose name I almost can’t speak, was born.

2009: Saw Metroland, and liked it enough to read the source novel.

2019: Exchange with an intern: Intern: "When I was fourteen my friend broke her arm in three places." Me: "Does she still go to those three places?"

2020: The mayor announced the downtown convention center, two blocks wide, was being converted into a Covid hospital, anticipating 50,000 patients a day by May.

2023: My daughter asked if I knew the USSR once made it a crime to mention an afterlife to a minor. I said I did not.

[ER]

April 6:

1994: My cousin picked me up after school and I went while she got her belly button pierced.

1995: Spent the day processing the fact Phil, my tutor, later my teacher, forcefully tried to have sex with me while I was in his car. I got over it relatively quickly and kept it to myself for years, but it shook me up because he had been someone I trusted.

1996: Had a spooky dream that dozens of rabbits surrounded me in a forest.

1997: Brian was down about Alan Ginsberg dying, but I thought his poetry was terrible.

2003: The man I eventually married met my mom for the first time.

2004: Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with my friend Clare, and even I thought Kirsten Dunst looked smoking-hot jumping on that bed in her underwear while she was stoned.

2006: Hung around Dayton after work and volunteered for its PBS station’s on-air auction, then raced a terrible storm home down I-75, and barely made it before the sky erupted with lightning and rain.

2007: Good Friday. Walked the steps in a snowstorm that limited visibility to three-hundred feet. Later went to a coffee shop/bookstore/open-mic poetry venue called Kaldi’s for the Friday Night Death event. Coming back Landon asked: “What would it take to make you cheat on me?” I found that a strange question, and I even like strange questions.

2008: Did the first in a series of pregnancy nude pictures, turning my face away from the camera. Not erotic, more maternal, a record of a special time I wasn’t sure I’d ever experience again.

2009: Asked my dad if my mom was invited to his wedding and he said she absolutely was. Shrug, that was cool.

2010: Home from our honeymoon in Brazil, and I came back sick with a 102 fever.

2012 Pregnant for the second Good Friday in a row. (Three out of the last five.)

2016: My dad began his blitzkrieg divorce from his second wife, who hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

2021: I walked a five-mile trail at night in the middle of utter nowhere when I was working at a facility in rural Wyoming. I was cautioned rattlesnakes were coming out of hibernation and liked to lie on the path but I didn’t encounter any, or the bears or mountain lions that were also there, and it was a beautiful experience under so many stars in one of the darkest skies I’d ever seen.

[ER]

April 7:

1994 News of Kurt Cobain’s death was all over, and when I first heard I thought they said Kirk Cameron.

2005: Up at 3:30 to watch the Pope’s funeral live. He was the only pope I could remember..

2010: Nothing like a threat of death to strip away hypocrisies, as revealed by the fact I finally told everyone that despite saying for years God probably didn’t exist, I was spending a great deal of my time praying, or more accurately, pleading for my life, and finding comfort in pursuing divine intervention.

2013: Discussed with an English major how Defoe would have us accept that Moll Flanders could repeatedly birth children and then basically walk away from them without a backward glance.

2016: Declined an invitation to trip on ayahuasca.

2018: My daughter was confirmed into the Catholic Church, which was her decision. None of my other children having shown much interest in Catholicism.

2019: My generally very honest friend told me she saw a homunculus emerge from a runoff drain amid smoke, and walk off into the night.

2021: Upset to be told what I thought was a one-week assignment might be extended to five weeks, all of it away from home.

[ER]

April 25:

1991: Read that Lord Byron’s proto-Victorian wife made their daughter, future mathematical genius Ada Lovelace, lie awake and completely still in bed for hours at a time, not even blinking, so decided to see what that’d be like. It was messed up, that’s what it was like.

1995: When I was lying in bed with Brian, I asked him purely hypothetically if he was going to kill himself, how would he do it. He said he wouldn’t answer something like that, so I told him he had no courage in his imagination, an accusation he found charmingly amusing. (Me, I said “lawnmower.”)

1997: Asked a teacher why if we’re all accepted into college anyway, they were still making us take exams. I concluded they had no idea.

1998: Didn’t like drinking, so I was designated driver at a kegger. My thanks? Someone hurled in my back seat, and no one gave me gas money.

2001: The nicest boy I ever knew asked me to marry him, and I said something horribly flip back, which I have always felt bad about.

2002: Finished working an assignment that had me away from family and friends for many weeks, and I was giddy with relief to be done with it.

2003: Fed sushi to three-year-old Tyler, who sprayed it back out of his mouth the instant he tasted it.

2010: Found out my agent sold rights to my short stories, meaning others could claim them as their own: and did. It was in the fine print, but I’d thought he was only going to market first North American serial rights. He acted surprised when I got mad about that, saying, “But I made you money.” There was almost one less nerdy Jewish guy in the world.

2014: My friend made me laugh by saying when we team up, my husband and I are a “velvet steamroller.”

2016: My husband sent me flowers because he stood me up on movie night to play Dark Souls III.

2019: My daughter and I laughed ourselves silly because she found this package of toilet paper with the cheerful claim on the outside that promised: “You’ll Love It!”

2020: Made violet jelly and ginger beer (which is non-alcoholic).

2023: Drove my ailing father in law around to get him out of the house, and he told me stories about his life. It was a sweet, brief undertaking I miss now, just as I miss him.