From time to time I read the online diary of the daughter of a former boss of mine. (I think I've written about it here before, though I can't seem to find the entry.) My boss is one of those mother-to-all types whose children are, in her eyes, brilliant and blameless, and she spends almost all of her time obsessing over their angst and gushing proudly over their accomplishments.

It came up again recently because PJD sent me a long handwritten note explaining why she couldn't attend my wedding: because SD chose the most expensive college she could find, and PJD and her husband are sacrificing everything to send SD there. I also just today received an email from PJD asking for "reminiscences" about working with SD — because, I might as well explain, when we were short-staffed at the startup magazine I worked for, she put SD to work, at age 12 writing press releases and articles and has had her working there ever since. SD is leaving for college next week, and the staff is putting together a scrapbook for her with everybody's "memories" of the joys of working with SD.

Thing is, SD is a total shithead. She was a shithead when I knew her and, judging from her diary, I believe she's even more of a shithead today. She was so hard to handle (read: "she's so advanced for her age that public school is just too remedial for her, that's why she's getting bad grades") that her mother actually let her go live with friends at age 16. But PJD has no freaking idea what this kid is into: reckless fucking in woods behind her house, pot/opium/E/acid every night, and to top it off, bratty, horrible rantings about how her parents don't really love her, about how pathetic her mother and father are, about how they try to "buy" her love with college tuition.

I don't like her.

Yes, we were all a little self-centered and ungrateful at age 18. But come on.

So, in the comments section of her online journal, I left an anonymous comment following one of her more lucid outpourings about how horrible her parents are.

Which reads:

"you mother loves you more than you know. trust me on this."