To me, the thoughts of keeping a Diary fall into those wishful items, such as learning to play the Piano. You look back and dream and/or sigh. "If only …." These days I do save a lot of e-mail correspondence but that doesn’t cover the first 50 years or so of my life.

I would have liked to have had a Keepsake Book of, "Firsts." The day i got my first bra, (W.T. Grant at the University Plaza) Seventh grade and my first pair of my new (not hand-me-down) patent-leather heels. There are the other normal, biological firsts. My first date. (It was the, "Sno-Ball," at the Transit Valley Country Club. December 1957. Hence the need for my 3.25-inch heels.) My first, non-family kiss. When my first born took her first steps (without tumbling down). There’s been a lot of, "firsts," but they’d only be really important to me. Others could look and read, mutter something and read on. Am I going to start one now?

I don’t have the time. I’m too busy. I’m lucky I get a little bit of time at this computer. Now, there’s something Hallmark could do. A Keepssake book for a girl’s, "Firsts."

"Missy," Susan Pauline Bauer

OK, Girls.  You started too young when looking back, most things that seemed so important in our lives, were really trivial.  I didn’t keep a diary or journal when I was young.  No regrets.

 I started journaling seven years ago.  I have filled seven books.  I call it "My Ordinary Days" and yet when I look through them and read what has been recorded, I find that my days are anything but ordinary.  My children will enjoy them when I am gone.

I have written a Diary since I was in the 3rd grade, but now I call it a Journal, and continue to keep journals. I try to make an entry each day, but sometimes its not possible. I have always felt keeping these journals are a way of perserving who I am, or was. Writing my thoughts down helps me de-stress if need to be, lets me vent without actually taking it out on anyone personally.

  And I also put little tidbits in there of what my children have done or do, funny and serious stuff. I hope one day when they read these they will have a good laugh or cry.

I was sitting my great grandsons the other night.  One of their grown cousins stopped by for a short visit.  She was asking the 13 year old if he had kissed his girl friend yet………He shyly said yes,…..it brought back my memory of the first time a boy kissed me. Which I shared with them.

I was thirteen and it was in the City Park one evening.  We were sitting in one of those old fashioned double swing chairs and he kissed me……5 times.  I was so thrilled as soon as I got home I wrote it in my Diary. Bruce kissed me 5 times tonight.

Later a small cousin who was visiting went into my room and found my diary and spread the news far and wide……….I didn’t write very much in my Diary after that.

I, like some of our other Posters would not have dared write a diary of some of my escapades in life during my thirties………I will tell you I always say.  I had 5 years of pleasure as a reward between my first and second marriage. Being single and active during my thirties was a lot of fun.  I would never have written anything down for fear my parents or children might read it……..I thought about writing a book after my Parents were gone…….but now I have to think about my children..grandchildren and great grandchildren.  They might be shocked (well at least a little) if they knew their grandma was so daring.

No Diary’s for me…………In fact I ran across something I had written many years ago (while cleaning out some files) I immediately put it through the shredder.  LOL