A while later one of the young women found the pad, and was completely mystified. "OK," she said, "Whoever wrote this, I want you to know that it's not OK to write things in languages we can't understand!" She then proceeded to go around and ask people if they had written it, and if they knew what it was. NO ONE could identify it as shorthand . . . one person thought it was Arabic, and they wanted to wait until another employee arrived who had worked in Saudi Arabia to see if he could unravel the mystery.
I never confessed, and left the mystery unsolved for them . . .
I guess this whole generation has grown up in the era after shorthand stopped being taught in schools, and after secretaries were widely used for dictation.