Where are you off to Little Jimmy?

I’ve always loved the idea of keeping a diary and writing in it—my observations, insightful perceptions: a real demonstration of my perspicacity that I could look back on a say, “how perspicacious” and then say, “wow, my vocabulary is immense and impressive I’m glad I studied five million words for the GRE because now, when I talk to myself, I feel really smart.” Now I have a blog so I don’t need to worry about writing stuff down anymore because I have millions of readers sitting in front of their computers waiting to see what really exciting things I’ll type. There was a comedian who said that blogging is like masturbating in front of a mirror and video taping yourself while you masturbate and then watching the tape and masturbating to it.

So that’s what I think about every time I type. It’s like my mantra. Anyway, so that’s really what diaries are about: self-indulgent shit, because what could be more fun to read about than me?! “Let me write all the shit I do down so then not only will I have done it by now I can fucking read about it.” Except sometimes I would go back and it would be really pathetic. Page 17 would say, "OMG Bobby is so cute, he is the best boyfriend ever" and then page 19 would say, "It turns out Bobby cheated on me during Thanksgiving break." And you can't even deny that you liked him because you wrote that shit down.

So all that is fine and good but then the Harriet The Spy books came out and sort of messed things up. Now instead of sitting down to write that my life was unfair it was like, I’m going to go out and fucking watch people do things and then write it down and read it later because I AM A SPY. But the intense spy missions that took place were, like, following someone to the grocery store. I bet kids got a lot creepier after reading Harriet The Spy: “Oh, where are you off to Little Jimmy?” “Oh nowhere Mom. I’m just going around with this notebook and binoculars because I heard our neighbor might be mowing his lawn and I want to record it. I may be gone for hours on end but that’s only because there will likely be other things—but I can’t discuss that with you.” Then Little Jimmy creeps off and his mom probably thinks he has fucking autism: the mysterious case of the dog in the nighttime—solved.

Then there are also dream diaries. I sort of like the idea of being able to wake up and write down all the weird shit I just dreamt up. But I feel like dreams are a little different—like some stuff you probably don’t want to remember. Like you probably don't need to share this stuff with anyone--even yourself. A dream diary is more like devastating evidence: “Things I thought about when I couldn’t control it.” It's like when someone has a fucking crazy dream and they share it with you and they're like, “I had the weirdest dream last night. I was riding around on unicorns and then they turned into bats. So there I was like riding a bat--this bat was fucking huge--and all of the sudden I found myself in the middle of a gang bang and then I killed everyone and ran away in my trench coat,” and then you’re like “what the fuck.”