Letters: Volume 6

Dear Sunglasses;

Why do you make me feel like such an asshole? 

Your functional properties are greatly outweighed by your ludicrously sleek appearance, which, when paired with my face, makes me look like I think I’m better than everyone else.  Which I am, but it is imperative that others do not sense this about me because it makes them very uncomfortable and sometimes they even fly into a jealous rage.

I don’t want to feel like a secret agent or a celebrity every time I need to shield my delicate retinas from the sun.   Do you come in any shape other than “secret agent” and “incognito celebrity”?   What’s that?  You also come in “frat brother” and “pilot”?  AND “Bono”?   

Well, Sunglasses, that sure is a lot of variety…  It’s too bad that I don’t want to look like any of those things.  

Do you know how stupid I feel when I walk inside and forget that you are on my face?  Everyone looks at me and thinks “that is completely unnecessary… “

Or sometimes they think “HOLY CRAP I BET THAT’S CHARLIZE THERON!!!” because we look almost exactly alike – especially when I wear sunglasses.   Which is kind of cool except for it’s a little demoralizing to have people look so disappointed when they realize it’s just some normal but still outrageously good-looking person wearing ridiculously large sunglasses.  That’s why I run away whenever someone looks at me.  I am doing them a service by letting them think that they were actually in the same grocery store with Charlize Theron, even though Charlize Theron has probably never been to Montana and may not even know that Montana exists.   That doesn’t matter.  What matters is that those people can go home and tell their spouses and friends and children that they fucking saw Charlize Theron in the grocery store.  Only they probably wouldn’t say “fucking” around their kids - unless they are bad parents, in which case, fuck ‘em.  They don’t deserve to think that they saw Charlize Theron in the grocery store.  And guess what motherfucker?  I’m not Charlize Theron, so you just lied to your kid. 

Anyway, Sunglasses, you can clearly see that you cause nothing but trouble in my life and the lives of others.  You should be ashamed of yourself!

I don’t know what I am hoping to accomplish by writing you this letter.  I know that it is probably a futile effort because you are so stuck on yourself and unwilling to change.  But there is a part of me that hopes there is a tiny kernel of goodness underneath all that shiny plastic and UV-protective tinting – that maybe you’ll hear my message and reconsider your role in the world.   It’s not too late to change, Sunglasses.  You don’t have to spend the rest of eternity as an indicator of douchiness.

It’s just something to think about…

-Allie

Dear Milk;

What ARE you???  I have spent the past 24 years being blissfully unaware of your trickery.   Just yesterday, I asked myself for the first time “What the fuck is milk actually?” 

I Googled you, Milk.  Do you want to know what Google told me you were?  It told me that you are a “colloidal dispersion.”  That means “water with a bunch of un-dissolved crap in it.”  DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW DISGUSTING THAT SOUNDS???  And that is on top of the fact that you come from cow boobies. 

I’m onto you, Milk.  You can’t fool me into thinking that you are just another beverage like orange juice or soda.  I am even beginning to question your validity as an addition to cereal.   That’s just putting larger undissolved chunks in something that is already rife with undissolved chunks.  That is weird and shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

Until you can offer me a suitable explanation for your behavior, I am afraid that I am going to have to boycott you.   I am sorry it has come to this, but what am I supposed to do, Milk?   I feel like I’ve been lied to my whole life and that doesn’t feel very good.  

Dear Papercut;

Ow. 

Fuck you.

-Allie

Dear Sand;

There are a number of issues I have been meaning to discuss with you.  You are a fairly respectable surface, Sand.  There’s no denying that.   But I feel that there are some areas of your performance that could use improvement.  

The first issue I would like to address is that of your attraction to wet surfaces.  When I have been wading in the water and I decide that I am done wading and ready to put my shoes back on, I am caught in the midst of an irreconcilable conundrum:  do I wade to the very edge of the water and stand on one foot while I try to dry off the other foot so that it is ready to be inserted into my shoe and stood upon so that I can repeat the process with my other foot?  Or do I brazenly walk across you to the parking lot where I will do my best to scrape you off of my feet before inserting them into my shoes again?  

Neither option is really a good option, Sand.  If I choose the first scenario, I almost always end up stumbling into the water and getting one or both of my shoes wet.   This also makes me look like an idiot to bystanders.  If I choose the second scenario, I have made the poorer choice because everyone knows that there is no way to rid your feet of sand without getting them wet again and that will only lead to scenario one again unless you are at a beach with one of those neat little foot-showers.  I love whoever invented those.   Anyway, my point is that if you were less attracted to wet surfaces, this problem wouldn’t exist.  Please think about working on this.

The next issue I would like to discuss with you is that of your inherent opposition to effective forward propulsion.  What I mean is that it is very hard to run on you.  That is all well and fine until I am being chased by a rapist or a murderer.  Then it gets kind of dicey.   Some might say “well, if you are being chased by a rapist or a murderer, just avoid sand… duh.”  But what if I am in the desert?  What then?   Do I just lie down and allow myself to be ravaged and then chopped into tiny pieces and buried?  This is why you need to work on this area of your performance, Sand.  I can’t always avoid you when I am fleeing from rapists and murders. 

Speaking of burying things, do you have any idea how hard it is to dig a hole in you?   For every shovel-full of you I move, you fill in between ¾ and 5/4 of the hole I have just dug – which, if you need to have fractions explained to you - means that I am left with either a pathetically shallow hole or a mound - which is the complete opposite of a hole and not at all what I am trying to accomplish when I have set out to dig a hole.  

With these small changes, you could be unstoppable, Sand.   Everyone would want to be on you all of the time.  You would be the most popular recreation-surface on earth – even above grass because grass makes people itchy and usually that is overlooked because grass doesn’t cling to wet surfaces (at least not when it is still growing in the ground), impede forward motion or prohibit hole-digging.   But if you solved these problems, you would have a leg-up on grass for sure.  

I sincerely hope you consider my suggestions and I look forward to being on you once you have implemented my advice.  

-Allie

Dear Decoy Deer Statue on the Corner of Adirondack and Willow;

Please stop scaring me every time I run past you.  It makes me feel very stupid when you startle me for the sixteenth time in as many days and I make a choked-up little squeaking sound and frantically paw at the air with my hands before I realize that you are that same damn fake deer that scares me every day.  

Maybe you could move out from behind that bush so that it doesn’t look quite so much like you are lurking? 

Thanks.

-Allie