Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

April 6, 2005


Dear Robby,

I know you’re as devastated about the death of Pope John Paul II as I am. (You are- you just don’t realize it yet.) I draped the hallway mirror in a black crepe (see photo, enclosed) in mourning. I will remove the crepe when I see white smoke coming out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel announcing that a new pope has been elected. Then I, like everyone else, will talk about how the new pope is nowhere near as good as John Paul II. Eventually, I’ll get used to the new guy and when he dies I’ll go through the whole process all over again.

I’ll put together a box of stuff to send to you on Friday. Sorry, but Friday is the soonest I’ll have time because tomorrow is too busy. I have to pick Dylan up from DETENTION and then I've got a meeting for a fundraising thing at Historic St. Patrick's Church. Dylan, who has DETENTION tomorrow, will stay home with “Rudy the Mean Math Tutor” and will NOT be allowed to play “Tony Hawk Underground” on Game Box or X Cube or whatever you call that mindless game-playing machine until all math homework is finished, checked, and double-checked.

It turns out that saintly little brother of yours is not so perfect after all. He has DETENTION tomorrow afternoon until 4:15 due to not turning in a Math assignment. In fact, he just got his report card and earned a D+ in, of all things, Math. He got good grades in everything but Math and Health. He got a D in Health, which explains why he doesn’t know anything about puberty or human reproduction, which seems inexplicable to me since he was able to get an A in science. How does a person get an A in science and a D in a blow-off class like Health, you ask?

Beats me, but I’ve come to believe that I will never understand the workings of Dylan’s odd little mind no matter how much effort I expend on his behalf. I bought him a book about puberty and human reproduction, which sat on his dresser for a couple of weeks, and then inexplicably disappeared.

About the same time the book (titled What’s Going On Down There?) went missing, Dylan was working on a social studies project about China. He was supposed to gather information about China from internet sources and fill in a worksheet with interesting tidbits such as the population of China, the major agricultural crops grown in China, etc, etc. I got him set up on the Yahooligans! website and went downstairs to fix dinner. I came up to the office every ten minutes or so to check his progress, which was amazingly slow. He was getting nowhere with the worksheet, so I thought maybe an online almanac would be a more useful source of info. I leaned in and minimized the Yahooligans! site and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a "Google Images" screen full of photos of young ladies in various states of undress.

Meanwhile Dylan jumped from his chair and went to stand by the window in the overly casual sort of pose one strikes when caught red-handed doing something no good.
(Hands in pockets, looking toward the ceiling, would have been humming “doo-dah, doo-dah” had he thought of it.)
I took one look at him, saw the obvious body language of utter culpability, then looked back at the screen. Sure enough, “someone” had done a Google Images search for “GIRLS BOOBS” and was apparently perusing it while his mother thought he was diligently researching the major exports of China. The little reprobate!

Evidently your little brother has a keen interest in GIRLS BOOBS. (Not exactly sophisticated, but I suppose GIRLS BOOBS have a certain charm if you’re 12) I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing while I gave him a lecture about the kind of spam, cookies and spyware he could pick up doing that sort of “research” online.

My thinking is that people who don’t do their math homework have no business looking at GIRLS BOOBS, or any other fun things on the internet. And I really have to wonder why those GIRLS were not taught to properly keep their BOOBS to themselves in the first place.
If I had the energy, I'd hunt them all down and give them DETENTION. But not with Dylan.

Much Love,

--Mom