Dear Diary

How old were you when you started your first diary?

The embarrassing admission is that the beautiful pink diary with a tiny lock and key that my mother had placed in the bottom of my suitcase lay in its virgin state for many years. It accompanied me home at the end of each term and returned to boarding school at the start of the next term.

My penchant for reading other girls’ diaries kept me from writing in my own. Knowing that someone else might read my darkest bitchy thoughts mortified me stupid. The fact that I had done precisely that to the other girls in the dormitory seemed to be different, somehow. The teenage mind, go figure.

As I read their blow-by-blow accounts of every misery and read what they had written about me I determined that it was better to keep those thoughts tucked away in the safety of my mind. Instead I wrote flowery entries that would have made a honey bee quite ill. I wrote awful poetry and even more dreadful song lyrics.

When I was completely out of saccharin the only thing to do with such a record of artificial clap trap … was to burn the beautiful pink diary, with the nifty lock and key, along with the trash between its pages.