by Shari Barker from Naniamo, BC
In 1978 my parents gave me a beautiful diary that they had purchased for my 11th birthday. It had a wooden cover with a wood-burned design of a seascape on the front bound by a leather strap. I took the extra time to do write carefully and do my best handwriting in it as I was using an ink pen to write down my secrets thoughts and memories.
A few years later I sat down to write my days events in it and after a few moments of looking through my book I quickly walked out to the living room where my parents and sister were. I held the book up in front of me waving it to my father. I proceeded to tell him in a high pitched voice that my little sister had read my diary. My sister quickly tried to claim her innocence. My father being a fair man asked me if I had caught her reading it. I said “No!”
Dad then asked ‘How do you know she read it then?”
“Because.” I said, shaking the diary at her. “She corrected my spelling mistakes!!!” There in ink she had crossed out the incorrectly spelled words and in her child's hand writing above each word was it's correct spelling.
My sister was punished accordingly but Dad told me years later that he had had the hardest time keeping a straight face during the whole thing. I still have the dairy and I keep it for all the memories that are within it and mostly the smile it gives me now remembering that day.