From the mouth's of babes…

I have a pen pal at a local elementary school that is 8 years old and has the same attention span that I do… 3 and ½ seconds. This is the letter that I received with the my special comments at the bottom.

Dear Meridith,
I love your letter Meridith. at the zoo in Des Moines they have a really cool goat area. I do not like peas thay taste dab. do you like peas? I like to swim do you like swimming? Meridith I got two A’s one B and one C on my report card. What did you get on your report card? Oh my Indian project I got a A.
Sincerely,
Your PenPal

So where do I begin? An amazing work of American writing, straight from the mouth of America’s youth. Lets start at the beginning, “Dear Meridith, I love your letter.” starts out good, I am amazing and dear and write amazing letters, so good call PenPal, good call. Then we start to get a little hairy. “at the zoo…” first of all, capitalize the first letter, but I’ll let it slide, you’re 8, whatever. But question: where was the transition between me being a good letter writer and the “cool goat area.” Maybe I have a misunderstanding of the world, but I have never met a goat area that I consider to be “cool.” Next problem: transition between goats and peas. I was never very good at my ITBS, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t know the relationship between goats and peas. Really?? I just don’t get it hun, I don’t get it. Then comes the really obvious transition between disgusting vegetables and being able to swim. Do you like swimming? Is there anyone who dislikes swimming? You can’t dislike swimming like you can dislike something like basketball because swimming is a life skill. Swimming may someday keep me from death, an amazing chest pass can not save my life. Of course I like swimming; but I’d probably like it a little better if I could wear a snow suit into the pool, self confidence not my strong suit. Here is where the conversation gets personal… grades. Thanks babe, as if my mom doesn’t make me feel bad enough about my poor grades, she must have called you in order to bring up the sensitive subject. The moral question is do I tell her the truth in my return letter and give her hope that someday she too can be a failure at life, or do I lie to her and try to get her to set her goals above the capacity that she is able to achieve. I do not know, any advice would be appreciated, just leave me a comment. Good news though, she aced that Indian project, because I know for one, I was very worried.
The best part of the entire letter though, was what was included in the back. A puzzle. I pulled it out only to find that it has 12,000 pieces. It is literally a lined piece of paper cut into 12,000 pieces, yeah, like that should be easy to put together. Maybe I’ll get that put together sometime when I have 14 free hours and lots of hair that I can pull out. Yeah good one pen pal, then there came the kicker. “thar is one puzzle piece that does not go with the puzzle.” Of course she threw that in there as if the 12,000 piece puzzle would have been too easy for me we are going to throw in an extra piece that doesn’t fit. Nice. I will work that one in, sometime after Hell freezes over. Love ya girl, but you are somewhat hard to follow. That may be why we get along so well.