dear_diary kerry this last visit to my parents house in atlanta i found a huge box of journals and notebooks in the closet of my childhood bedroom. that’s one of three or more, my mother told me. i only took three home. one was my first diary, pink and shiny with a little lock, the kind of generic thing you can buy a key for anywhere. when i got home i was prepared to break it but remembered that for some reason i’ve (conveniently) carried two of these keys with me, to dorms and countless apartments and rental houses. i never had another diary like that–not after reading harriet_the_spy, when i realized that a composition book was less childish, more “professional,” just open it up and scribble some brilliant observations and slam it shut as quick as you please. i was dismayed to see that many pages had been torn out, which i don’t remember doing and now regret. what was i thinking at the time, how young my internal editor was, how early she appeared like a devil on my shoulder! there is one entry left, dated friday, 7/11/96. it reads: i hate my brother. I was going through my desk drawer when he came in and started taking things he thought i said he could have. he took a bunch of pencils and when i reached out for them he just moved them farther away. i don’t want to say what else happened, and i shouldn’t worry about him. he’s just a big fart anyway. 211208 what's it to you? who go blather from