Now go, write it before them

The first journal

My mom bought a blue journal for me when I was four years old. She’d sit with me on the living room couch, ask me about my day, and write down whatever I said. The very first entry on November 3, 1980 begins like this:

“At school I did something that I shouldn’t have done. And I did something terrible I was supposed not to do. I pulled out gum and stuck it on the floor accidentally. And the teachers got it off today. That was it.”

I love that she wrote down what I said word for word, funny little kid speak and all. Occasionally my mom would insert her own commentary in cursive. In the next day’s entry about falling down and hurting my forehead wherein I claimed, “it blooded and blooded and blooded,” she wrote, “I don’t know how true this story is.”