The cool book

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

The coolest thing I ever kept was a little book of thoughts — a place where I wrote everything and anything that crossed my mind. One day, my father, who suffers from dementia, found it and began reading the pages aloud in front of everyone. The room erupted in laughter and shock as he said, “Is this what you write in the diary we gave you for your birthday?”

That moment stung — my privacy, something I held dear, had been laid bare for everyone to see. Since then, I never wrote in it again. Yet, I couldn’t throw it away. I’ve kept it all these years as a kind of bittersweet souvenir, its pages still holding the faint scent of pink perfume — a reminder of both innocence and the day it was lost.