Introduction

  
I edit the 'Diary' section of Slate, but I wouldn't dare contribute to it. This is because my job involves sitting in front of a computer in a tall office building and pecking away at my keyboard all day (I'm pecking right now). Sometimes my mother calls. See, you've already heard enough, havenít you?

To write a Diary for Slate, you don't have to be famous, and you don't need any previous publishing experience, though some of our contributors are and have. The most important test is whether your days make for high-quality, detail-rich eavesdropping. Take the four writers who are included in this e-book excerpt. Leslie Carr is a school nurse who wrote in to nominate herself for a stint. Ira Glass, the host of the radio show This American Life, filed his dispatches when he went to Los Angeles to pitch a TV version of the show to studios. Lucas Miller is a detective with the New York City Police Department. One day he innocently e-mailed Slate to dispute a comment Scott Shuger had made in the 'Today's Papers' column, and next thing he knew, weíd signed him up for a Diary (and we've kept our tentacles in him: Check our archives for his 'Flatfoot' pieces on police misconduct and what cops really think about marijuana). And you may already know who Karenna Gore Schiff is. She wrote this entry when she flew home from her job at Slate for a long weekend to see her folks--and to accompany them to the 1997 presidential inauguration.  

No one told these writers what to say in their dispatches. When we sign up Diarists, we just pick a week for them to write, and when that time comes, they e-mail us an entry each weekday describing what they're up to. Nor are their submissions edited in the traditional sense: After all, they're supposed to come directly from the source, much like an e-mail a friend would send you after an eventful day (this is why we donít allow Diaries that are supposedly from bigwigs, but are actually written by their speechwriters or public relations folk). We just check the entries for clarity, make them look presentable, and slap them up on our site a few hours after they land in our in-box.

We've been doing the same, week after week, for the past four years. Don't we get some stinkers? Well, yes --- and if you ever see one on Slate, please excuse us. But we left those out of the book, along with a slew of wonderful entries we simply couldn't fit in. What the full, paperback version of The Slate Diaries does include are 66 other Diaries along with (and just as terrific as) the four in this excerpt. The authors range from Ben Stein to Beck to Bill Gates, from Dave Eggers to David Sedaris, from a UPS driver to a classified-ad writer to a summer camp counselor. And we still commission a fresh Diary each week for the magazine; check back at Slate.com every afternoon for a new installment.

As the current Diary editor, I was charged with writing this note. But I'm a newcomer, even in Slate's short lifespan. Cyrus Krohn and Judith Shulevitz edited the feature from 1996 to 1999 and are responsible for originally bringing most of the insightful and witty narration collected here to Slate's pages. Along with the rest of the Slate staff, they are a constant source of enlightenment, and --- no insult to our Diarists intended--the best daily company I can imagine.

--Jodi Kantor

Day 1
  
Now that I am back to work as a nurse in two elementary schools after almost 10 years at home with my children, daily life is more circumscribed. There are fewer choices about how my time is spent. I am actually less hassled, less torn in various directions than before. I used to feel that I should be doing 4,000 different things, from cleaning the garage to aerobic exercising. Now it's decided: I go to work. And when I am home, I am better able to relax. Weekends are newly distinguishable from weekdays.

Work is basically fun. If I look at the clock, it's to monitor a pulse or see when to give a dose of medication. It's not to wonder when I'm getting out of here. Since I'm so new, I would do well to model any of the nurses who have been training me. They are energetic and dedicated, with a mission to care for and educate the kids they encounter. It is impressive. There is one in particular --- a willowy mommy whose natural resting expression is a smile. I've never seen anything like it. She is upbeat without being false, tender without sappiness. She strikes the perfect pitch with the kids. Her technique for telling malingerers (or frequent fliers, as we call them) to get back to class is lovely and effective and always done with that smile.

When we were tykes, we would never go to the nurse for an itch due to a bug bite or for chapped lips. It was understood that these things were parts of life with which we coped. Now such visits are commonplace. What does it mean? I see it as one of my main functions to reinforce what these kids must already sense is reality in these cases. The child says, "I have a mosquito bite." I say, "Yup. (Pause.) You have a mosquito bite. (Pause.) It's gonna itch today, and it's gonna itch tomorrow. It will probably also itch the next day until it heals." Then, just so they don't think I'm a total meanie, I teach the little trick about scratching around the bite instead of directly over the bite. Dismissed.

I wish this school district allowed the regular administration of Tylenol or ibuprofen as needed. Or, in lieu of that, I wish I had some sort of placebo to give. They're so handy. True, they foster the simple solution idea and promulgate the life view best put forth by the fast food chain "Hot 'N Now," but placebos sure would keep kids in class longer. Forty years ago, my nursery-school teacher had a sack of what she called "bump pills." They were Tootsie Rolls. When we had a boo-boo we got one. Nice deal. One day she accidentally cracked me on the head with a wooden bench and gave me the whole damn bag.

I was a hyperaware child and a stutterer to boot, so being newly immersed in the elementary-school environment makes me more than a little uneasy. I see the kids in classrooms, seats arranged in clusters or horseshoe formations, chewing pencils, jostling in the cafeteria, Hula Hooping in the gym, and I am glad to be over 35 years old. Very glad. The nurse's office was a wonderful refuge for me as a stuttering little girl. I had to run from all the required speaking --- from the What I Did Last Summer gig to the seventh-grade reading of Romeo and Juliet in which everyone had a part, up and down the rows of desks, taken in turn, until the turn was mine. I'd bolt when I saw it coming. Nothing like a good stopover in the nurse's office to eat up 30 otherwise most uncomfortable minutes.  

Today, if someone similar to my past little self would show up in my office, I'd be likely to draw her a bubble bath and order room service. No matter that it would be cafeteria fare: Chicken Nuggets With Tea Roll, Hash-Brown Potatoes, Winter Mix, Peach Crisp, Milk.

Excerpted from THE SLATE DIARIES (c) Copyright 2000 by Jodi Kantor. Reprinted with permission from Public Affairs. All rights reserved.