Column Chronicles
 
Initial diary notes
 
 
Frank Cotolo
May 4, 2017
 
Often, I let the public in on some of my personal writings. These are interpretations of my t houghts, emotions and fictional actions I write in my diary. Here are some from my first diary, when I was 12 (1962).
 
Jan. 3 - What's with Janet? She looks at me as if I can't swim. How does she know I can't swim?
 
Jan. 23 - I asked my father to paint the walls of my room and he said he would do it if I found a bunch of sheets to put over the furniture so the furniture wouldn't turn out to be the color of the walls. I want the walls another color but really, where am I going to find all of those sheets? It's just not worth the effort.
 
Feb. 4 - I sure like learning the guitar but it may have more to do with my guitar teacher, Miss Sheila, because she is a piece. I think she likes me but she knows she can go to jail if she made a sexual move on me during my lesson in the living room. Not that my mom would notice. She would be too busy putting out the fire she always sets when cooking dinner. I know six chords on the guitar now, none of them don't buzz when I play them, though.
 
March 1 - There are no entries in six days of February. I must have been too busy writing poems for Janet. She is so gorgeous and I got to smell her when she ran down the hall at school, bumped into me and twirled around. She was smiling and I don't know why because it hurt me. Her knee hit my hip and the ruler from her looseleaf book stabbed me in the wrist. But that smile was enough to make me want to write poetry about her instead of writing in my diary. Maybe this will happen a lot. I don't mean being bumped into my Janet, although if that is the only way to smell her I hope it happens a lot, I mean me missing days of writing in this journal. What will happen if there are months with empty days?
 
April 23 - My guitar lessons are going great and today Miss Sheila said she was real proud of me because after I did my guitar homework I figured out a song all myself. It was a riff from a blues song that I heard on one of the old 78 RPM records I found in the basement. Those 78s are very heavy and the edges are very sharp. I scratched myself, not the record, putting one on my phonograph and I had to use Mercurochrome. I hope my mother doesn't see that I spilled some Mercurochrome on the bathroom rug. Hell, I'll just tell her it's blood from when I was putting the Mercurochrome on my cut and she will be more concerned about the cut than the rug.
 
April 30 - I asked Janet today if she was still going with Joey Montogaratti and she said that isn’t his name, that his name is Joey Montorgoretti and I said isn't that another person, a guy who lives on 54th Street and she said no, that is the guy she was going with and I said so you were going with Joey Morttiliari and she said that isn't his name, I was going with Joey Montorgoretti and then the school bell rang and we had to go to our next classes, which were not the same classes. Crap.
 
Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.
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