I loved Paul, and my best friend Paulette, loved Ringo. We knew that all we had to do was let them, somehow, know we existed and they would fall in love ~
When I was 13 years old, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, my mother gave me a diary for Christmas. It was upon finding this fat little diary, years later, with all its notes and stories, that I was inspired to write.
I remember opening the pages, ten years later, and reading the first notes. They were entered on January 1, l964. The following month, the event that would inspire most of the notes in the diary for the next three years, took place. On February 9th, 1964, THEY made their premiere USA performance on the Ed Sullivan show. John, Paul, George, and Ringo. It was America’s first introduction to the Fab Four. My teenage friends and I fell in love and lost our hearts, and maybe our minds, over the Beatles. I loved Paul, and my best friend Paulette, loved Ringo. We knew that all we had to do was let them, somehow, know we existed and they would fall in love with us, too. Life was simpler then, softer, younger and full of dreams.
My diary was documentation of my escapades as a Beatlemaniac. I also realize, now, it is a portrait of a time gone by, an innocent time for us and for America. Sometimes, I wish it was still so. When I first re-opened my diary, I also found a number of notes that Paulette and I had passed to each other during our high school classes. These helped complete the story and much of the dialog in this book comes from those notes.
It has been 50 years since I first saw THEM on TV and I’m ready to reveal what happened in the next three years; even the illegal stuff (pant), as I lived, loved, and breathed the Beatles. We were obsessed with meeting them—and nothing was going to stop us—even if we had to deceive everyone in Cleveland to do so.
I laughed a lot as I re-typed this material into a Word document and I also felt pangs of sadness and anxiety at some of the more intense moments and memories. Some of the things made me teary-eyed even after 50 years. How dramatic everything seemed then.
Those innocent days are now gone, of course, but what happened then instilled in me forever the fact that dreams can come true and goals can be reached with a passion, a plan, and a lot of luck!
This story is told chronologically, from the moment my friends and I fell in love with the boys from Liverpool, which is when I thought, in those days, our lives really began. Looking back, maybe what happened three years later was actually the beginning of this story. Either way, this story is true. I hope you enjoy it!
With Gratitude,
Dee
http://www.ConfessionsofaBeatlemaniac.com/