New Year's Resolutions of a Brooklyn Teenage Girl, 1956

Note: Click on the list to enlarge the image.





Here's one of the 100 lists included in the collection To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us (due out Nov. 6!). In the book, you get to hear form the author about the story behind the list, what was going on in her or his mind when she or he wrote it. This list was written at 11:56 pm, 1956. The author held on to it for over fifty years before sending it in. A list like this underscores that these lists are now only windows into our personalities and who we are, they also tell us about our time period. Some resolutions are timeless, some are quite specific. "I will not get fat and flabby" is still pretty common, "I will sew buttons on as soon as they fall off. . . " not so much.