The Holly Hobby Journal - Fall of 1983

I am always curious how my memory matches with any written history that existed ‘back then’. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, I was sporadic in keeping journals and diaries. My typical would be to jump into a new diary with gusto, keep it up for a couple of months, and then the logged entries would stop. The best journals were those that I was required to keep for a school class. There was no wiggle room for me to move on to something else more interesting.

For the story I wrote on flunking my driving tests and practicing with my Grandpa Gib, I wanted to see how my diaries correlated. My mom, who has been a vigilant calendar keeper with daily entries since 1965, is always a great source of truth as well.

Here is the link to the story: https://www.sandyalane.com/writing/driving-lessons

What I do have are the actual documents for my failure of the driving exam at the DMV and the conditional addendum to my passing of driver’s ed. The journal covering the summer to fall of 1983 was a school year calendar and began on August 1, 1983, so there is no mention of driver’s ed. And the only mention of my failed exam and practice drives with Grandpa was very breezy, as though ‘no problems here.’ When Mom checked her calendar, there was one mere note on my driver's license attainment, and that was a day that noted “driver’s office closed today, Sandy will wait to get license.

Hmmmm….