Dear Diary: Tales from the First Grade

I recently discovered the diary that I kept when I was seven years old. It sounds like I'm making that up, because what first grader keeps a daily journal? This one, that's who. It's been an interesting peek into the psyche (and varying stages of penmanship) of my young self. For example:


January 14, 1985 was a pretty jam-packed day, and not a great one for Mindy. I'm glad I felt the need to specify that the wall involved in the tooth-cracking incident was "hard." I'm also glad I confessed to my greatest fear in elementary school (other than E.T.), which was somersaults. And apparently I still don't know how to spell that correctly, because I had to defer to spell check about three seconds ago. Live and learn. Well, sometimes.