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  The Journal

  John Mancini

  Copyright 2010 by John Mancini

  The Journal

  Part One

  How long have I been sleeping

  how long have I been drifting alone through the night

  how long have I been dreaming I could make it right

  if I closed my eyes and tried with all my might

  -Jackson Browne

  July 16, 2001

  The first thing I would like noted for the official record, your honor, is that this assignment was NOT my idea.

  OK, in the spirit of at least trying to do this assignment let me start with the basics.

  My name is Sarah Middleton. Up until a few weeks ago, I was an eighth grader at Herndon Middle School. Now I am a "rising freshman" as they say. I don't quite know what this means. What I do know is that right now I feel like I am exactly nowhere. Not in middle school anymore, but not quite in high school either.

  The reason I am writing in this journal in the first place is that I have a summer reading assignment. I haven't even gone to high school yet, and they are already giving me work.

  Our assignment is this. We have to read The Diary of Anne Frank. As if that wasn't bad enough. What on earth do the great English teacher gods think they are accomplishing by assigning us to read a kid's diary from 60 years ago? But to make it even worse, we are supposed to keep our own diary or journal all summer. The idea is that we are supposed to take a quote from the Anne Frank diary each night as we're reading it, and then write about it or anything else we want to write about. I guess they think that by making us pick a quote each time, that maybe by mistake we'll actually read parts of the Anne Frank thing.

  They said in the assignment that the new teacher - who I haven't even met yet and is already making demands on me - is not going to actually read these journals. They said he's going to leaf through them, see if we have any quotes at the beginning of each entry, and that's it. They said they're not trying to grade anything, just get us thinking about "ourselves and the world we live in."

  Yeah, right. Like I believe that. There's no way I'm going to put anything personal in this thing in case anyone else gets hold of it. Here's what I might do. I got this idea from the movie, might do. I got this idea from the movie, The Shining, which was on TV the other night. I could start each page with a quote, but then write "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" hundreds and thousands and millions of times just like Jack Nicholson did in the movie. And then when the English teacher looks through the journal, maybe he'll really freak out just like that skinny actress did in the movie when she found Jack Nicholson's book.

  But then again, I probably won't do that. You probably don't know this, but I am a big talker. But slow to actually do the things I sometimes talk about. If only my parents could figure that out, maybe they wouldn't hassle me so much.

  I guess that's enough for today. Especially since this section probably doesn't count for credit since there's no quote in it. So enough! Tomorrow a quote!

  July 18, 2001

  I guess I am violating the first rule of this assignment by not starting it out with a quote.

  I'll start it out a little differently. It says in the book that Anne started keeping her diary, and then after a couple of years, heard a radio broadcast in which the Dutch government in exile said they were hoping to someday gather stories of people in hiding and then publish them. The book says that when Anne heard that she imagined that someday maybe her diary would be published.

  Well, I have a-couple of things to say about that.

  First, how weird is it that that is exactly what happened? I wonder if thinking about the fact that it might be published changed the way she wrote the diary. I guess I'll know a little more if and when I actually read it! I know it would definitely make a difference with me. There's no way I would want what I really think about some things to be published.

  It says that's why she used fake names for some of the people in the book. It seems like that would be a pretty good idea. Because you can never quite tell how people will react, even if you're telling the truth.

  That won't be the case with this diary, though, because a) I'm not going to write anything personal in it; and b) once this assignment is over and the teacher knows I've done it I'm going to burn this journal in case by mistake I do put something personal in it.

  Here's another thing I wonder about. Would Anne have written what she did if she knew she was going to die in the end? We know the end of the story; she didn't. I wonder if she had any idea that in the end, all the world would know about her would be a few pictures and the diary. It seems a strange thing that her life should just come down to that.

  But I guess that's more than some people get. I remember when my grandfather died. I was four years old and I can remember a little bit about going to his funeral. But I seem to remember less and less each year, until now it seems like he is just a guy who shows up in some pictures around the house.

  He must have been more than that, but now nobody knows it. I mean, he must have had things that made him laugh, or opinions about something - anything - or something that made him unique. But heck if I know.

  So maybe Anne didn't have it so bad after all. No, that doesn't sound right. I don't mean that it didn't stink to die, obviously. What I mean is that here we are, 60 years later, and a bunch of kids who will be freshmen at Herndon High School have to spend the summer reading her diary and writing in a journal. That seems important. At least it's written down. I don't know hardly anything detailed about my grandfather. I guess when you come down to it, I don't really know a lot about my own parents and what actually matters to them. Other than, of course, that they love to boss me around.

  I better stop this now and actually read a little bit in this book. I probably won't get any credit for just reading the forward.

  July 22, 2001

  Today's Anne Frank Quote: Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems 10 me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a 13 year old girl.

  That seems to me to be as good a place as any to start.

  I think it is pretty weird writing in a journal, too. Anne did pretty well for herself if this is the first thing she ever wrote and then wound up getting it published.

  I wonder if she had lived after the war whether she would have written anything else. Or also if she hadn't been killed in the war - I don't know yet how, only that she died - whether her book would have been so famous. Or whether everyone would have said, "Oh, it's just a bunch of nonsense by some 13 year old kid."

  I think sometimes when I say things my parents just nod their heads as if they hear me, but they are really not paying any attention to me at all. When I want to go out with my friends and stay out kind of late (like maybe 10!) they imagine all sorts of things going on, when really we're not doing much of anything. If they only knew what actually goes on.

  Here's what I think they imagine. We go to somebody's house. We sneak out the bathroom window and hitchhike to the nearest bar. We meet a bunch of motorcycle guys with tattoos. They give us drinks and take us riding - without helmets, God forbid! - on the Beltway at 125 miles per hour. They get us back just in time to sneak back through the bathroom window, take 23 breath mints, and get picked up at 10.

  Here's what really happens. We go to somebody's house. We watch movies. We drink Cokes. Sometimes we make prank calls to boys. We go home.

  OK. I will make a personal confession right here in this journal. I am a little odd. Some might consider me a bit of a nerd. I don't have a ton of friends. Sometimes I got the feeling last year that the other kids at school were trying to keep the
ir distance. The year didn't start out that way. I wonder, did I change, or did they?

  There is an old TV show - Wonder Years- that we recorded on tape that sometimes we watch when we're on long trips. There is one episode about this girl named Margaret Farquar. She was the goofiest kid in the school. Everybody made fun of her. She wore her hair in three strange pigtails. She liked bats.

  At the end of the episode, they had a shot of her picture in the yearbook. Kevin Arnold, who is the main character, is looking back at this strange character once he's an adult, and now that he knows how she eventually turned out. He says something like, "Margaret Farquar. PhD in Biology. Mother of Six. And lover of bats."

  Here are the things that I do that some people consider a little weird. You be the judge. Who is weirder, me or Margaret Farquar?

  #1 - I am in the band.

  #2 - I am in the math club.

  #3 - Sometimes I wear 2 different colored socks to see what people will do.

  #4 - Sometimes I talk to myself or hum at inappropriate times.