For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for April 05, 2022

Parochial

sure, Elizabeth

in the digital age in which we live now, it’s about keeping blogs

It’s your long term memory

It’s a sign of literacy. Literally. ;-)

At least a locked book diary is secret (until a parent pries it open!).

Once on the Internet, it’s there for all the world to see!!

I understand that Marilyn Monroe’s diary sold for millions.

Thus we see the beginning of the “Michael has a diary” story, a story that has one of the most unexpected endings in this comic strip.

Well, usually guys are not eloquent with words or wordy, less writers, or expressive. Not the guys I know, anyway. My younger son writes once in a while when he is in the mood, but he doesn’t keep a diary – just a little scribble here and there just to jot down something he’s been chewing on. But the guys in HERE, mostly in Luann, are a different breed! All those fancy words and sentence structures? Don’t see that anymore these days. My guess is they are from another era, the older generation. Writing is a lost art with the younger generation.

I thought guys called them journals, girls called them diaries

It would be interesting to know how many guys keep a diary (or journal). I always did as a teen girl but of course my mother found it and read it. I started writing it in a code after that, then when I started studying French I’d throw in some French words to frustrate her.

I was given a diary with a lock and key when I was nine. I honestly had no idea what to do with it. At nine, I had no secrets that needed to be locked away. I guess I just never understood writing down private thoughts and locking them up with a key.

Always just kept them in my brain….

If you want to keep it private don’t let anyone know you are doing it, otherwise it’s not private.

A “sign of intelligence”? ..In the case of these two Patterfoobs, it’s a fluke.

When I was a girl most of us had diaries with a lock and key. Mine said things like “Got up. Went to school. Came home. Went to bed.” Needless to say, I didn’t become a writer.

Never place your hidden thoughts on paper unless you want the world to know. And with little siblings… the world will know.

I’ve been keeping one since 1978 and transferring it online since 2005.

That explains why I never got into journalling.

I tried to keep a diary for a while, it was a school project. I discovered I wasn’t interested in recording how uninteresting I was.

Veterinarian Alf Wight, better known by his pen-name James Herriot, kept a diary. It was an invaluable aid when the wrote his books.

Heed my advice: Always keep a little notebook with you, so you can write down your feelings whenever there’s something new that needs noting. I’d have lost so much of my childhood if not for my diaries.

Do people actually ever read what they wrote?

OK, how smart was Mike by showing his sister his diary? Not very. So, Liz is right.

We have learned about our human past by reading diaries that have been found that men and women from a different time period , have left behind. A window into history and the people who made it. A written time capsule.

Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but I never thought of myself as having a diary. As a kid, they were considered girlie, despite my mother’s insistence that was a stereotype. I read accounts of explorers, generals, and sea captains who kept journals, ergo I thought of myself as recording my deeds in a journal.

I wish I had a younger sister growing up. It would have been fun to be part of a family.

Another stupid look!

& THAT, everyone, is the beginning of Michael becoming a successful writer!

Dull,middle class lives keep dull diaries.

Farley’s life would be more exciting right now.

I subbed in two school districts. In English classes, I would sometimes give 7th graders easy, open-ended writing assignments just to get them to try putting their own thoughts on paper, like what they did over the weekend. In one school, pens immediately and eagerly scrawled across papers. In another class, in my own district, I was met with silence and blank stares. Finally, one boy timidly asked, “What do you want us to write?” That is a serious problem.

Since my loving wife died, I am on my 14th notebook of writing, venting and basically just trying to keep from going totally crazy. Can’t say it doesn’t help but I still feel overwhelmed and crazy.

Walked into that one.

I kept a diary for a year when I was in ninth grade. One day I sat down and reread what I had written for the past several months. I was going through a rough patch in my young teen years. What I read was so sad and depressing that I put the diary away in a drawer in my night table and never looked at or wrote in it again. I like to write about my life, but these days do it mostly in emails to treasured friends and family members and in some of my posts on GoComics. However, I do enjoy posting my artsy photographs on Facebook, which are real expressions of my state of mind at any given time.

So….Michael is okay with keeping a diary, but not okay with his friend being gay?

I tried to write a little something everyday but it all sounded so trite. It must be inherited as I noticed my mother’s diaries usually were reports on the weather and what she cleaned that day.

Or bragadocio?!?

Come on, Liz! I don’t read your dumb diary, so I appreciate it if you don’t read mine. You read my diary all the time!!