#memories 

What do today's girls know about the 70s / 80s agenda? And I'm not talking about the Smemoranda or the Moleskine or some multicolored little book on which today's young people write down thoughts or appointments, assuming that some still don't use their mobile phones. I'm talking about the “agenda” concept of the 70s / 80s.
There were various brands, for example the tender one of Holly Hobbie, but, for the most part, they were common agendas with an unattractive appearance within which, however, you were building a world. The more space free of figures or writings they offered, the better.
The original function would have been to write down homework but, in reality, we wrote about everything. First, the secret diary which, as you will see, was not so secret. So phrases, mottos, song lyrics, cards, stickers, photo clippings of actors and singers. Woe to telling lies, the agenda was the magic mirror to which each of us entrusted our soul and our existence, true, strong and uncontaminated! It was, in short, partly similar to, and partly much more than, a social profile.
And the agenda, little by little, day after day, was colored, grew, overflowed, swollen with train, concerts, cinemas and theaters tickets, with songs and poems, between Leopardi and Renato Zero, with human figures who reanimated upon rereading and came back to life: the deceased teacher of Italian, the teacher of Latin, the terrible teacher of English, the silly and womanizer professor of philosophy. And then school companions, parties, friendships, loves, first kisses, disappointments, quarrels and reconciliation.
The agenda always came with us, at friends' homes, on vacation, at the beach, at school. During class hours, the diaries were exchanged under the desk, so that you could read what your friend had written and be able to insert a piece of your own, the equivalent of a comment to a post today. It was a way to communicate, to let your best friend know that thing that you hadn't been able to say verbally, to apologize, to reaffirm an affection or confess a love or a sin of envy or jealousy.
I, I admit, have never stopped. I still have the habit. I started writing the agenda when I was seventeen and - with only brief interruptions in periods of particular depression (and here we understand the therapeutic value of the agenda) - I have continued to this day. In the cellar I have boxes full of them, divided by years, about forty volumes that someone one day, after my departure, will throw away without even opening them.
Now I just write down the things that happen and what I do. The style is flat and accountant in comparison to the liveliness of those early school years. During adolescence, one is creative, inventing nicknames and striking jokes, coining expressions and neologisms, a jargon to share only with close friends. It is the difference between being twenty and sixty, it is the difference between bubbling with life - keeping an eye open, compassionate and moved - and understanding, instead, that all the games are now over, that life can only be endured. and not  molded.
What a thrill the agenda! It was a way of saying "I exist, I am here and I have a soul", it was comfort and refuge, relief and fun, tears and laughter.
Those years, that enthusiasm, that feeling that everything was still possible, will never return. Now you need to know how to make the best of a bad situation, feel part of life as it is, appreciating its beauty and enjoying the little things. (Maybe even writing them down on the agenda, why not?)