All journals and diaries from my childhood up until age 22 or so went up in smoke. That's right, I burned them.

But what memories you have! (Of the burning, I mean. I've never done anything so wild as to burn stuff that wasn't intended as kindling)

I only journaled a little bit in Jr High and it's not very interesting stuff. At the time I wasn't very good at getting my feelings out, and instead of writing about how I wanted to kill myself, I just mentioned what movie I had watched.

In high school I wrote some bad poetry, but mostly it was about note passing, which was a habitual daily occurence. Ignore Geometry and write a lengthy note instead, decorate with doodles and song lyrics when the stream of consciousness hits a wall, fold it in a complicated fashion, meet so-and-so at the corner of the 400 building on the way way to 5th period and pass off. Every. Day. In 1993 that was the way to social network, at least in my neighborhood.

I've always felt annoyed that my best conversations over the phone weren't recorded for posterity.I adored that the passed notes were captured on paper, and I saved them. Each and every note anyone ever gave me in high school, I saved. Swear to God. If I sat next to someone in a class and we passed notes back and forth, I saved it if it seemed somewhat interesting.

My boxes of notes were my most prized posessions. At once point I wrote a will in case of untimely death and made sure to mention that everyone got their notes back. (remember that story?) I think this was actually evidence of hopefullness that someday I'd get my notes back from them.

I had begun to go through these boxes in recent years and scan them in so I can rid myself of the baggage. It's kinda sad to revisit, though. Those relationships, those conversations, they're only good for so long. Now I've forgotten what those inside jokes meant. There are lots of fun surprises in there though. It's only as an adult that I can see the painful sexual tension a male friend of mine felt towards me. Then, I really had no clue. I wasn't that horny in high school.

Most of it really isn't all that interesting, and it makes me sad to think that all these thoughts that I cultivated and saved, that I thought were so valuable, really weren't worth much in the long run. Sure, there are good memories there, and those experiences made me what I am today (read: A Message Board Participant), but I can feel that childhood misconception eroding away. The things we say and do don't matter as much as I thought they did.

I still wish I could read those notes that I wrote...alas, no Sent Box is available when dealing with ruled notebook paper.

On the other hand - I did write an entire journal about the history of a love triangle (square, really) between me and 3 friends in high school. However, I wrote it after I'd already graduated. I thought it would make for good drama - but I couldn't keep the truth out of it, and I sure as hell didn't want to do a tell-all. That's a problem I continue to have when writing longer stories.

Here's a hint -don't write things in your diary in code. 30ish years later you'll never have any idea what was going on.

Burned journals, burned photos. When I was 16 or so we went to the beach, lit bonfires and burned so much stuff we shouldn't have (clothes, mixed tapes, evidence). The Beach patrol loved us. Not.

Oh lordy. I have a whole box of horrible short stories and bad screenplays, torn from the headlines of my own adolescent angst, from this period. (I seem to have thought my life just had to be made into a movie someday. Be very glad that it wasn't!) My brother found them when he was helping my Mom move a couple of years ago. He sent them to me, after gleefully reading and howling at them. I glanced through the material, but couldn't bring myself to read any of it in depth. There is certainly Mortified worthy stuff in there.

When I went off to college I had the distinct pleasure of creating a tombstone effigy out of some scrap lumber. Not having any paint I improvised with household materials and used nail polish to write my name under some Neitzschean inspired epitaph (Behold the Uberman) - ah the surprise and delight when the words themselves caught fire and announced my name in flames - good times.

Hmmm, I'm reminded that somewhere there's a journal I did for class in the junior high era when I was obsessed with Tolkien, I believe it is written in large part in Runes...

As a boy, I don't think I'm at all unusual in never having journaled during my early teenage years.

I certainly had no urge to purge everything about my adolescence and whatever angst it produced. But there really wasn't much written material.

Starting in my early 20's, there's plenty of writting ... in fits and starts, i.e., whole years or decades missing. Rather than have any urge to destroy ... I've saved a lot of this stuff for perusal in my senior years. I'm sure I would have done the same with earlier writings / self-evidence ... but it simply does not exist.

I never kept a diary of any kind, I never wrote, except for tales of visiting Disneyland. I would write pages and pages of what I went on, which rides I liked the best, and all in as great a detail as I could achieve, given that I had never visited there in my life.

Strangely enough, my USA diary after my first trip, was uncannily close to what I wrote prior. I still have that, from 1991. I shall put the first day's worth in Open Mic and see what you all think.. It is both mortificational, and enlightening.