This is the date when I started writing a diary. Still don't know why. It was more of a girls' thing to do. I figure I just wanted to write, and with all the hormones that started running, I expected interesting times ahead and I wanted to keep them. In a way.
I kept writing it more or less regularly until august 1974, when the events started occurring faster than I could track them.
Its main feature, at least on the first notebook, was the many "wise" blurts on the covers, all sides of it, some mentions of songs I liked to hear ("Red baloon" by Dave Clark 5, "Bonnie and Clyde" by whoever).
The first entry says today I lost one gate key, so we're now left with just one, and that the bunny had a litter so there were at least eleven rabbits (or the other kind... coneys?).
Two days later, the entry says I've been, with school, to the fishponds in Ečka... and that I was wet for a bit. I remember my new wristwatch (first one, actually, soviet-made molniya or strela) was allegedly this-or-that-proof (see 20-VI-1965.). Later I understood that it was somewhat shock resistant and protected from dust, not water. For days I watched the two droplets which gathered on the inside of the glass, vanishing slowly. Eventually they evaporated, and I think the watch lasted some years. I took to watching it closely, and when at some point the glass (plastic?) cover moved a bit, some hair got inside, a small one - from an eyelash or eyebrow - and the hands would move it around.
Around this time I moved it on my right wrist, because it was snagging against the strap when I played accordeon. So instead of taking it off, forgetting it in places, looking for it, putting it back, this was easier. And I had a story to tell when someone asked.
On 23rd was the day the end-of-year schoolmarks were delivered; I passed with excellent, all fives, so parents took me to Kantina for a dinner in the evening. Now I think this was more for their own pleasure, but I had good time too. The atmosphere of the band playing, people dancing (the beguin was popular, waltz and tango too), the statue of nymph on a large fish, washed by dozen sprinklers from the edge of the little pool, the lights... It had its charm.
On 25th I got bored, wrote "the weather is getting worse bit by bit, and so on, and so on, and so on...". Then, below, written next year, "I turn a new leaf".
At school, my teacher told my parents that I'm sort of slow at the PE and that I may get into problems when I go fifth grade, as it'll be out of her hands then. The grades 1-4 had one teacher for everything, all the subjects were taught by the same person. Grades 5-8 had specialized teachers for each subject (though they didn't have to have a full college at the time, just a 2-year "higher school" sufficed), and she seems to have guessed that the guy who'd get me imagines himself as some kind of a drill sergeant. So she recommended that they get me to a more thorough medical checkup.
Which they did. I remember a trip to Belgrade, to some old but bright and well-kept building, where some cardiologist took my ECG and listened with his stetoscope a lot. He mentioned something of this particular genotype which I share with dad (and now, come to think of it, his dad and probably few more people in that bloodline), which is kind of barrelchested, wider in the hips than in the chest, high palate, and the calves spread a bit out, so if I bring my ankles together, I have too much knees and can't keep my legs straight. The net consequence of this is some kind of heart defficiency - a mild arrhythmia (one double beat instead of full cycle every minute or so, depending on exertion), inefficient pumping under stress and a weird ECG, which catches interest of every cardiologist since then. Which means I shouldn't bother running or climbing with others - I may get there, but everyone could outrun me.
The events were reaching me in some way, but didn't really mean much to me. The war in Vietnam came down to hearing „...kilometers northeast of Haiphong“ every day or two in the news. Belgian Congo was not DR Congo and the cities are now named Kinshasa, Kisangani, Lumumbashi. Will that also rename those drums, as in „and what are you playing“ - „beating them kinshasas“. I also heard that some guy Ranković was removed, but that didn't touch me. The verb „to touch“ in the sense of influencing was partly replaced with „tangirati“ (to tang...entize?) a couple of years later and I won't like it. I didn't quite know what latin was, the scope and usage of it, it just stuck out.
And yes, Mao swam across Jangce (Yangtse). Truly an event, but I didn't get why would he do it in the first place, what for.
4-VI-2020 - 5-VII-2026