Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
July 13, 2006

Lost Journal Turns One

Journal Entry: July 13, 2006 (age 37)

This week, Tim Mollen’s Lost Journal reaches its first birthday.  (It is registered at Crate & Barrel.)  The one-year mark seems like a good time to thank my readers for their feedback, their encouragement, and their reluctance to declare a fatwa against me.  I’d also like to take this opportunity to address some of the questions readers have asked me in letters, in emails, and in the parking lot of Target.

The most frequent question I get is “Did you really keep a journal your entire life?”  No.  Writers are taught that keeping a journal is vitally important to the life of the mind.  Having never had a life, let alone a life of the mind, I ignored this advice.  So the column is a way for me to cheat.  I am keeping a journal in retrospect.

Some of you may have caught on to this conceit when I wrote a journal entry for the day I was born.  I mean, come on – they didn’t even HAVE word processors in 1969!  Others of you have struggled with the idea of, say, an 11-year-old using words like “hedonistic” and “stentorian” (see last week’s column).  When confronted by these incredulous readers, I have reluctantly admitted that I did not spend a whole lot of time in 1980 writing autobiographical sketches for future publication.  “The Love Boat” was on, and I was busy deciding who was my favorite Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.

I also have been asked if all the stories I recount are true.  I can only tell you what I told Oprah.  My columns are based on a true story.  Certain facts are made up, for the simple reason that I can’t recall all the details of events that took place years ago.  So despite my best efforts, I do get facts mixed up, misstated, or just plain wrong.  Luckily, my editor catches many of my mistakes, as when she pointed out that in 1983, local weathermen did not yet have Doppler 5000 technology.  What a dark time for humanity.

The best and worst examples of my storytelling accuracy occurred in the same column, when I wrote about a family trip to Yankee Stadium.  I did extensive research on the Internet, looking through team rosters and box scores to find the exact date and score.  I felt very proud of myself when I was able to pinpoint the game as a double-header against the Detroit Tigers on September 12, 1976.  My pride was short-lived, however.  My oldest brother Jerry, upon reading in the column that he had supposedly been on this family trip, pointed out that his being in law school at George Washington University at the time would have precluded him from piling into the back of the family station wagon for a road trip.  Oops.

Another of my older brothers, Bob, is the true comedian in our family.  In the end, I come back to his philosophy of humor and truth: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”  With that credo in mind, I look forward to another year of discovering what’s hidden in the pages of my lost journal.  I find out once a week, just like you do.

© 2006 Tim Mollen

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