When you were a little boy/girl...

[Pensive]

Did you write a dairy? Have you got something from your childhood? Like letters or a diary or even a school note-book?

I was looking for Pygmalion yesterday, and I found a very old personal diary from my childhood. I would have been nine at that time. I had written in Urdu (my native language) so the translated contents might not seem as funny/cute as they actually are but here we go:

2nd January

My every friend is good but Amna is the best one because she can't see anyone's feelings being hurt. Hira is also good but she tells lies. So I like Amna. She is my true friend from heart. This is truth. This is really true.

12th February

Today I could study very little. My annual exams are going on. These are the exams of third grade and today it was the exam of Computer. I got full marks in it and I was very happy. But then I fought with my brother, he hit me. When I will grow old I will hit him back as well. But I am too small now.

17th March

My diary is very good. I love it because I can write a lot of things in it. I can express myself through it. And when I will grow old, I will look at it and I will see how I was.

Not Dated

I miss my Khala's daughters. (Khala means mother's sister) Her daughters are my very good friends. They love me and I love them too.

24th April

A play is happening in my school. I have not been given a good role so I feel bad. Actually I had been given a good role by another teacher but then I got ill and the teacher gave the role to another girl. Now I am just a soldier in the play. I don't want to be a soldier. They kill people.

What amazed me the most was an Urdu poem written in the diary which I think was better than what I will write now.

For those who can understand Urdu:

Hamain bohat kuch bhool jata hai
Tab yaad ata hai jab hum say koi woh duhrata hai
Hamara dil toot jata hai
Har koi rooth jata hai
Phir jitna pachtain hum kuch nahin ho pata hai
Aansoo phoot parte hein
Moosibtoon kai pahar toot parte hain
Agar kisi kay sat bura karo gay tum
To khud bhi waisa hi bharo gay tum

Lose Translation:

We forget a lot of things
We remember it when someone does the same to us
Our heart breaks
Everyone leaves us
Then even if we feel bad, the same old good days don't return
Tears find their way
Mountains of problems attack us
If you will do ill to someone
You will see the same will happen to you.

All this stuff reminded me of how much I used to try and keep the diary hidden from everyone. But now, these things don't matter. But it was cute, and might seem stupid to some people. Reading it gave me a good laugh and miss those days as well, and made me think that what other people would have included in their diaries/letters/anything from childhood.

So have you ever come across such a thing from your golden days? Would you like to share it with us? :)

[dramasnot6]

Aww i love your diary pensive! VERY insightful! I especially like
"My every friend is good but Amna is the best one because she can't see anyone's feelings being hurt. Hira is also good but she tells lies. So I like Amna. She is my true friend from heart. This is truth. This is really true." At such a young age you have developed moral judgement many of my peers have not even considered. :D Oh, and my very favorite was
"When I will grow old I will hit him back as well. " :lol: Love it!!!!(and you did it,right?:p :p )

hmm...something from my past? I know this is slightly cliche, but my yearbooks really do evoke memories from when i was young. Not the actual pages of photos and group photos and such, but the commentary and facial expressions. All my little phases are exemplified in my peers and teacher's yearbook comments.
Here are some extracts, i am picking one from a teacher and one from a particulary conformist and critical student for each yearbook i still have:

4th grade:
Teacher: Send me a free ticket to come see you in Broadway someday!
Student: drama queen.....(mean looking smiley face)
5th:
Teacher: Keep working on getting that cubby organized! (this reminded me of what a scatterbrain i was in my youth....)
Student: (cant read the handwriting but it says something about being Mrs.Shakespeare:confused: )
6th:
Teacher: Please keep thinking of quotes! I expect to see them published one day (happy smiley face) -in 6th grade i was obsessed with "creating" little quotes and verses of wisdom and jotting them down in a small pink notebook, which i have also discovered and am rather dissapointed at for the poor quality of my writing back then.
Student: Shut up. (i found this dreadfully amusing when looking back but at the time just infuriating)

thanks for the great thread pensive! it was really fun to look back through my old stuff:D :thumbs_up

[Pensive]

Aww i love your diary pensive! VERY insightful! I especially like At such a young age you have developed moral judgement many of my peers have not even considered. :D Oh, and my very favorite was :lol: Love it!!!!(and you did it,right?:p :p )

Yeah! Not for once, twice or thrice; but lots of time! :p And on those days when we had had fights, my mother called the house "war ground."

Thanks for sharing the memory, dramasnot6. It's fun to read things like this. :D

[EAP]

But then I fought with my brother, he hit me. When I will grow old I will hit him back as well. But I am too small now.

ROTFLMAO.

:p

Edit: Amna? and Hira?

[Virgil]

Hey I just had a lot of my mother's old pictures digitized. I don't have a baby story, but here's me at my first birthday. Yes pictures were mostly black and white in those days. I'm that old. ;)

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o123/virgil_015/40.jpg

[Pendragon]

I took the boys to visit my mother the other day and she was telling them how we used to spend winter evenings, back in the sixties it snowed heavily here but the jet stream moved to the West and North and it hardly ever does now. Just rain. But we'd put wood in the stove and pile into bed, all of us in one bed, our old house actually had ice freeze on the inside of the walls in winter, and I would read classics to them. She was still remembering Twain's Puddin'head Wilson. We had no TV and a poor radio. But I had books, and I had learned to read before age 5-- high-school level. Can you imagine how much You-Know-Who and Jane, (since the word will edit out even if I'm not using it vulgarly), bored me to death in Grade School? :lol:

[Pensive]

ROTFLMAO.

:p

Edit: Amna? and Hira?

Names changed for the sake of anonymity! :p

[Pensive]

Hey I just had a lot of my mother's old pictures digitized. I don't have a baby story, but here's me at my first birthday. Yes pictures were mostly black and white in those days. I'm that old. ;)

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o123/virgil_015/40.jpg

It looks really nice. :) At first I mistook you as a girl. :p

[miss tenderness]

Wow, I love the idea ,pensy:) I wrote some notes when I was 14 ,15,16,17, but for a reason I do not know I stopped when I entered college. It was my secret notebook , I thought , but then I came to know that every single person in the family have read it behind my back! My little sister used to steal some lines when her teacher ask her to write an essay about her dreams …etc! Saddly,it's in Arabic , but it's not as brief and cute as yours. My writings are quite long.


2nd January

My every friend is good but Amna is the best one because she can't see anyone's feelings being hurt. Hira is also good but she tells lies. So I like Amna. She is my true friend from heart. This is truth. This is really true.

My favorite , very simple and childish , and Hi to Amna .


Today I could study very little. My annual exams are going on. These are the exams of third grade and today it was the exam of Computer. I got full marks in it and I was very happy. But then I fought with my brother, he hit me. When I will grow old I will hit him back as well. But I am too small now.


:D did you do it?


I miss my Khala's daughters. (Khala means mother's sister) Her daughters are my very good friends. They love me and I love them too.

Is Khala used also in Urdu? Because it's also the word that we use to a mother's sisters. Khala ,for mother sister, Amma , for father's sister. Langauges are really interesting. What is a father's sister called in Urdu, Pensy?

Also Amna is a common name ,it's my bro's wife name:)

[Riesa]

Hey I just had a lot of my mother's old pictures digitized. I don't have a baby story, but here's me at my first birthday. Yes pictures were mostly black and white in those days. I'm that old. ;)

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o123/virgil_015/40.jpg

ah, the good ol' days before you became irascible and petulant. ;)

actually, a darling baby picture, Virg. :)

[EAP]

Pensive,

Gotcha. Amusing aliases.

Father's sister is called 'Phuppo' in Urdu. 'Amma' is mother.

[Shadowsarin]

The closest I have to this is a few word documents on my computer from when I was about 12/13. But just looking back a 'mere' three years is almost disturbing.

Christ, growing up is scary!

[SummerSolstice]

Oh, my! What a distraught-looking little guy! :lol:

I've always had a deep sense of "history." Even when I was really little I kept everything for "memory's sake." Somehow I thought people weren't supposed to figure out that kind of thing until they were older, but there you have it. As such, I did indeed keep a diary, but I wrote in it as though writing a memoir. With everything, every little detail. I seldom made a small 'update' entry, just long entries about monumentous occasions that never got finished (the entries, not the occasions). Plus, they're all so... earnest. Hyper-earnest. It's somewhat embarrassing. o_o

Flipping through, a few that caught my attention were a two-page list of things I can't do right, an exultant story about having acne breakouts all week then clearing up just long enough to get through school picture day, and a place where I taped in a fortune cookie fourtune reading "Hard words break no bones, fine words butter no parsnips." Best fortune cookie ever. I'm glad I kept it. :D

[Pensive]

Wow, I love the idea ,pensy:) I wrote some notes when I was 14 ,15,16,17, but for a reason I do not know I stopped when I entered college. It was my secret notebook , I thought , but then I came to know that every single person in the family have read it behind my back! My little sister used to steal some lines when her teacher ask her to write an essay about her dreams …etc! Saddly,it's in Arabic , but it's not as brief and cute as yours. My writings are quite long.



My favorite , very simple and childish , and Hi to Amna .




:D did you do it?



Is Khala used also in Urdu? Because it's also the word that we use to a mother's sisters. Khala ,for mother sister, Amma , for father's sister. Langauges are really interesting. What is a father's sister called in Urdu, Pensy?

Also Amna is a common name ,it's my bro's wife name:)

When I was in third grade (in this diary) I used to write really short notes unlike now. At that time, I was very slow at writing actually. Even a few lines would make my fingers ache.

The interesting thing is that we call mother Amma. Father's sister is called Phuppo. :)

Yes, studies of languages is very interesting. Urdu, being a lashkari language has been originated from a mixture of Turkish, Arabic and Persian. So no wonder that it resembles Arabic so much. :D I was reading an article on Turkish and I found that I could even understand many words from it. :)

[Madhuri]

Hey I just had a lot of my mother's old pictures digitized. I don't have a baby story, but here's me at my first birthday. Yes pictures were mostly black and white in those days. I'm that old. ;)

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o123/virgil_015/40.jpg

You look really surprised. :D Very lovely picture. It seems you planned to eat the whole cake :D

[Virgil]

It looks really nice. :) At first I mistook you as a girl. :p


ah, the good ol' days before you became irascible and petulant. ;)

actually, a darling baby picture, Virg. :)


Oh, my! What a distraught-looking little guy! :lol:




You look really surprised. :D Very lovely picture. It seems you planned to eat the whole cake :D

Thank you to all who commented on my picture. I hope I didn't miss anyone. I don't remember if I ate the whole thing Maddie. Probably. :D Amazing how a cute little boy can grow up to be an ugly old geezer. :p

[mtpspur]

Kept one as a teenager until Mom invaded my privacy and I threw it away. Much unpleasantness that day. You think I get snarky on the blog imagine a very angry unhappy teenager busted by the parent who taught him how to be a drama queen. Jump up 37 years later and my blog is my version of a diary/journal and I'm finding it restful. I can indulge the drama queen (within reason) and be myself. Mom will never read THIS stuff!

[miss tenderness]

Hey I just had a lot of my mother's old pictures digitized. I don't have a baby story, but here's me at my first birthday. Yes pictures were mostly black and white in those days. I'm that old. ;)

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o123/virgil_015/40.jpg

you still have the same look,Virg:)

[Themis]

Hey I just had a lot of my mother's old pictures digitized. I don't have a baby story, but here's me at my first birthday. Yes pictures were mostly black and white in those days. I'm that old. ;)

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o123/virgil_015/40.jpg

Awww, you were cute!:D

@Topic: I kept a few when I was still at school (12 upwards). Most depressing that time.

[Virgil]

you still have the same look,Virg:)

That's interesting Taleen. My parents immigrated to the US when I was three years od and the first time I visited Italy was when I was around 25 years old. There was a cousin who used to baby sit me and when he saw me after twenty something years, he recognized me right away. He said my face was still the same.

[Idril]

I had one as a teenager but I threw them away because I was so disturbed reading them as an adult. Obviously, I knew I struggled with depression in high school and college but I guess I didn't realize just how bad it was until I read those diaries and it seems like I should be far enough removed from it that it wouldn't bother me but it did so I tossed them. I kind of regret it now but still, I don't think it served any purpose to keep them. :p

Virgil, you do still have the same look. My youngest is like that, he's 12 now and he has the exact same face he had when he was a baby but my oldest looks like a completly different child most people are shocked when they realize the baby/toddler in the picture is him. My brother and sister and I are that way too, we don't even remotely resemble our baby pictures as adults.

[Madhuri]

I started a diary when I was in college (it means I was not a little girl). But, it contains only my darkest memories, and I wrote in it only when there wasnt anyone to talk to and my mind was so full that it would actually burst if I didnt do anything about my thoughts. Its not kept as a per-day entry book, but more as, as and when required diary. And, I never want to read twice what I wrote, never had the courage, so, its just kept at a place from where it will come out if I have to say something. But, of late I dont feel the need, which is a good sign, so I hope it remains where it is and I never have take it out. :D

[LPRox015]

Yeah, I used to keep a diary and still do. I also have a box of my "treasures" which contains old letters and cards from my childhood friends. I even have a dried flower that I got from my grandmother as a gift. Little silly things but they mean a lot to me. Precious memories are relived everytime I look at these "treasures". And my old diaries are full of silly entries and quotes from my favorite books. I start a new one each year so I have all of the diaries I have written since the age of ten. It is so interesting to reread them and see how much I have grown and how much my perspective has changed over the years. :)