Kid Learns That The Daily Kina Has Readers

Last night, when Kina was on the phone with her Lala, a recent headline from The Daily Kina came up, and Kina was momentarily taken aback: “You know The Daily Kina?” she asked, amazed that her own grandmother might read a newspaper that, until now, she apparently believed existed solely for her personal entertainment. This, in turn, surprised me, because I assumed she knew that there were TDK aficionados. I’ve produced two hundred and thirty-seven of these front pages and written a daily newsletter for a hundred and fifty-two consecutive days. I talk to friends and family who bring up random headlines like they were actual news all the time, but it seems that this is all new to Kina—a celebrity unaware of her own fame.

I’ve said before that there are three audiences for The Daily Kina: Future Kina (for posterity), her current parents (for relief), and everybody else (as a distraction). In a way, it’s fine that those audiences are separate, and it’s comforting to know that Kina has enjoyed the paper for her own reasons, but I wonder what Kina will think now that she realizes there are other people reading the paper. I want to be respectful of her needs, and I’ve been thinking recently that if she ever told me to stop doing this, I would do so in an instant; I just assumed she already knew. Some day, I’ll stop writing these, either because I will have gotten lazy or because she wants a little alone time. If it’s the latter, I hope that she and I would take the time I’d otherwise be spending writing these things and go back to read them all together; when I put the washable markers to the page every morning, it’s that day that I’m thinking of. In any case, at the moment, she seems unbothered and amused by it all, and so the newsroom plows on. We take our mission seriously, and we are grateful both for our readership and for our hilarious subject and publisher, in whose judgement our faith is further diminished now that we realize she was pouring all her wealth into a newspaper that she believed was intended only for her, though it does explain why she has been so cavalier about all the fart jokes.

Hi to all of you, again. Kina knows you’re here.

dad