Short Stories and Ramblings and All

I started writing a serious diary when I was 13. I had somehow come across The Diary of Anne Frank and I was obsessed . I could not get enough of that thing. I read it and reread it. I even got hold of a copy of an enormous, annotated version of it that had sections she had revised placed side-by-side for down-to-the-letter comparison. Oh, I was a fan. The boy I had a crush on at the time became my Peter van Daan. I sought out anything even tangentially related to Anne. I followed leads about her father’s remarriage after the war, read accounts of people who saw her in the concentration camp and the reminiscences of her former schoolfriends, and tried to find out what exactly a Rin Tin Tin film was. I even named my cat after hers. I kept up the diary-writing habit even after the obsession cooled. I couldn’t talk to my mother, so I talked to my diary. I told that old girl everything. I think, in retrospect, that my father was reading it. Years later, I unexpectedly started dating ...

She opened the door, her heart thumping high in her chest. Her breath caught slightly. “Come in,” she said. He looked at her quizzically. His beard was dark, his frame stocky. He pushed off his work boots and stepped over the threshold in thick, fuzzy socks. They were both unsmiling. She glanced down at the large black toolbox in his right hand. A smile broke over her face. “That looks like a doctor’s bag!” He laughed. His eyes crinkled. “It’s this way,” she said. He followed her into the bedroom. “What’s the diagnosis, doctor?” They chuckled lightly. She walked around the side of the large bed in the middle of the room, guiding him to the broken latch. She pointed at it and explained what had happened. He twiddled the latch and gave a knowing, “Ah”. “Shall I leave you to it?” “Sure.” She went into the other room and started pottering. There were quiet sounds coming from the bedroom, but it would seem weird to stand and watch him working. She wanted to, thou...

Young Lad said “I’ll take a pooter, If I can find a nifty Lime scooter; The dark I will brave For a ride I do crave; I shall blast you aside with my hooter!”

I’m happy So happy Life is good My lover loves The neighbourhood is peaceful The sun is setting I have books to read I’m learning and growing I have pillows and windows What more could I want?

I am stunned at what I learnt today. I spoke to two women who are mature-age students. One is in her 70s, the other in her 40s. Neither of them has been educated beyond high school. What stuns me is that in the year of our Lord 2026 there are still women – white, middle class – whose self-perception and prospects have been blighted by backward, misogynistic, anti-intellectual forces. Both women told me that men close to them conjured the bogeyman of communism as a reason why they shouldn’t attend university. One of them was told by her mother that higher education would be wasted on her since she would marry and never use it, while the other has a mother who has never held a job. I can see the lack of self-confidence in both women. The 40-year-old is struggling to adapt to the university workload, and I can see how confusing and painful that is to her because she knows she is intelligent and can’t understand why it is so hard for her. I will do what I can to provide encouragement as we...

Dear Diary,  I have another crush. It annoys me how easily I form them. Apart from the fact that I'm married and in love already, this one is inappropriate age-wise. He's an adult and all, but much younger than me. He is fine though. He looked at me and smiled such a beautiful smile when he saw me yesterday. His eyes, his mouth, the way he throws his head back sometimes, his kindheartedness - they're all so endearing. I knew he was special the first day I met him. I didn't talk to him that day because he didn't seem open to chatting. When I have crushes, I often have a particular thing that I see us doing. It's almost never having sex (thank God). With one handyman who visited my house, I saw us standing with him behind me, me leaning against his chest, the two of us serenely gazing at the far clouds, and him saying approvingly, "Good girl." In this case, I have an image of him throwing his arms around my waist, picking me up, and laughing with happine...