Letters I've Meant To Write
The Source
Summer should be a time for catching up…finally getting around to doing those things we’ve put off all winter and spring…like writing letters. Letter writing as we know it is about to go the way of the Edsel and the 8-track tape. Email, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Twatter, Tingle, and Tattle have all but done digital deletion of letter writing skills on everyone under 40. But, since I’m just a shade over forty and still delight in the joys of taking pen to paper, I spend some of my summer mornings writing those letters I’ve meant to send if time allowed. If it did, here’s a sampling: Dear Ameren Electric, You have 2.4 million customers and so I doubt you’ll be able to recall my name. I’m the nature-loving-degenerate-tree-hugging-slob…or so your recent letter would indicate. You told me ‘Your Ameren service meter is located where our meter readers are unable to take proper readings…please trim around the meter.’ I just now paced it off…you can see my meter from approximately a half-mile away. I didn’t actually walk the entire half-mile to look, but if I would have, I could have. The meter is located between two 26-inch high clumps of prairie grass. I’m not trying to hide your meter, really. And I didn’t move it. I swear. Does your meter reader have a prairie grass allergy? Honest…if your eyes were strong enough you could see the meter from the next county. In short, dear Ameren, I’m glad you’re in charge of electrical power instead of optometry. p.s. Be assured that I will keep paying my bill whether or not you bend over and read the meter. Or to the trucker behind the grocery store, backing his semi in between two parked cars using only one hand while his other was busy holding his cell phone and chatting away. Dear Trucker, Where did you get your license? Is chatting with your wife in Mississippi or your girlfriend in Tulsa really worth the price of fenders on that Ford Explorer? And if you do crash, could you throw the produce out first? I’m short on lettuce. To the lady who brings her chaise lounge to all outdoor events: Dear Acreage-Grabber, Yes, I know the event was advertised as “Bring your own lawn chair,” but that monstrosity you toted in last night was the size of a Toyota. Entire Third World villages could have taken up residence in the plastic webbing of your lawn furniture. And besides the issue of your own version of the land-grabbing Monroe Doctrine, the chassis of your chaise sticks far out into the night and by 9 o’clock you had caused three elderly stumblers to crash unceremoniously onto the Bingo tent. Despite the softness of the summer grass, our brittle bones and plates of elephant ears do not take such collisions lightly. They sell regular lawn chairs. I’ve seen them. Get one. And to Visa credit card services: Dear Shysters, I spent 35 years teaching the art of writing to 7th-graders. Of the thousands of kids I instructed, not once did I have a student who writes as poorly as the guy who knocks out the fine print on your card statements. The only real purpose in any kind of writing is simply getting the message across. In this you not only fail miserably, you’d have been held behind in 7th-grade until your interest rates become reasonable (translated: never). As I teacher I always tried to determine who was the absolute bottom of my class in ability to make sure I was reaching them. If I had you and the phone company’s scriptwriter in the same class you’d be in a virtual tie for last.