Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Dear Robby,

Stacey says you had a great vacation together in Savannah. I’m so glad! I am, however, disappointed in the Day’s Inn employee, Myrna. I sent her explicit instructions to arrange the box of stuff in an artful and appealing way. Stacey said the box was just sort of left on a table. That justifies my policy of avoiding hotels that don’t offer room service. That’s the test. If the hotel has room service, it’s probably okay. If not, enter at your own risk and don’t bother stealing the ashtray.

You won’t believe this, but I think I’m coming down with yet another traumatic illness. I’m not entirely certain, but I think I’ve got either a thoracic aneurism or the deadly 1918 Influenza. We won’t know for sure until I drop dead on the spot or turn blue and bleed profusely from all available orifices. All we know right now is that I feel a little bit crappy and I had a strange pain just below my breast-bone in the diaphragmal area this morning. The pain persisted all morning, and then seemed to fade away after lunch. My guess is that its one of those tricky, hard-to-pin-down aneurisms, the symptoms of which is masked by my potential case of Influenza. (Hemagglutinin5, Neuraminidase1 or “H5N1” as those of us “in the know” about deadly viruses like to call it.)

Also, (and this is PROOF!) I have a temp ranging from 99.1-99.8 on the many cheap-assed unreliable digital thermometers I have purchased at Walgreen’s every time somebody- usually me- is sick around here. I have to buy new thermometers all the time because I never believe they work. Every single time I test my own healthy temp, the damned things read me at 97 degrees. The last time I was able to get an accurate temp from anyone in our household was the morning in 1997 when Dylan clamped his feverish jaws on the last working mercury thermometer in America and broke it. (I am still trying to forgive him for that.)

Anyway, I may or may not still be alive when you read this. It’s pretty much touch-and-go at this point. I will possibly get up and go about my business tomorrow morning, or I’ll fall over dead from the explosive hemorrhage of the aneurism, or I’ll turn an ugly shade of cyanotic blue and die of plague. You just can’t tell at this stage.

Oh, and I also have a new phobia about falling down the stairs. I’m going to need to look that up and find out the actual name of the phobia if I live long enough to need to worry about it. The way it works is that I have a small but persistent dread of walking down the stairs, but I’m not at all fearful while actually ON the stairs. It’s just the pre-stair stage at which I am affected. So far it only requires that I not try to carry things in both hands while preparing to descend. Otherwise, everything on the stair-route is routine and non-problematic. Although I do wish we did not have that ceramic tile in the front hall. Heads could so easily be cracked open on a surface such as that! Arms and legs could be broken beyond repair!

Also, the stairs at Bent School are a safety hazard if I ever saw one. I can’t believe small children are expected to negotiate stairs such as those. What are people THINKING to design a school with rock-hard staircases? It’s insane, and probably a legal nightmare of liability, too.

Here’s something else you’re not going to believe: Dylan only got a B- on the Balloon Car Report! I know, it’s outrageous, I knew you’d agree. Mrs. L. clearly misunderstood the role of Newton’s Second Law of Motion in the balloon car’s design. She also didn’t give full credit for listing the materials used. That’s ridiculous- everything that went into that balloon car is mentioned in the report. Dylan and I took great pains to insure this report met all assignment criteria. SOME people (Mrs. L) just can’t see what’s right in front of them, can’t see the forest for the trees. Or, as in this case, the cars for the balloons.

I thought about mounting a defense and trying to win back some points, but Rudy won’t let me. He says Mrs. L must have expected the materials to be listed as an actual LIST. Well how boring is THAT? My god, any second grader can make a simple list. This is sixth grade!

It seems obvious to me that Dylan’s method of interspersing the materials used at logical points within the body of the report is a superior way of working them in. A list is dull, tedious, and mentally exhausting for the reader. Dylan’s clever means of introducing the balloon car parts exhibited a subtle panache, a certain je nes c’est quoi. I suppose SOME people (Mrs. L) don’t have sufficient sense of literary style to appreciate the finer quality of Dylan’s scientific writing style. SOME people (Mrs. L) probably still think the earth is flat and Galileo is a heretic.

I tell you, I am VERY tempted to go through the report and highlight all the materials used and send it back to Mrs. L. Rudy says this would embarrass Dylan. So what? Nobody ever won the Nobel Prize for Science by letting the small minds (Mrs. L’s) of the world walk all over them. And besides, having an embarrassing mother is a tradition this family has handed down from one generation to the next for hundreds of years. Who am I to break the chain?

Enclosed you will find a copy of Dylan’s Balloon Car Report and grading sheet. YOU be the judge.

Much Love,

--Mom