Previous: My Literary Creations
Unsent Correspondence by C. Randall Nicholson
Thanks to email and Facebook, any future compilation of my letters will be sadly sparse, but here are a few that I wrote on paper or in Word documents and never sent, thank God. They provide a brief, sketchy glimpse into my evolution from precociously eccentric to disturbingly bizarre.
Third Grade Thank You Letters
I misspelled the fat man's name because I was confused by the copy of that Tim Allen movie we had lying around the house. But what's really funny is that it was on an old, obscure format you've probably never heard of, called VHS. And that silly squirrel, wherever he is, is almost certainly dead now, because they rarely live over six years in the wild. I miss him.
To Uncle Roger
For a sixth grade(?) class assignment. I remember writing "Allabajawikiwoo" at the top, but I don't remember why.
To the Purple Stars
Yes, I used to threaten innocent girls. In sixth grade I was in a band called "The X-Rays" (briefly called the Chris-Rays) that never performed any concerts or even had any instruments, but had formed for the sole purpose of combating a rival band called the Purple Stars. I miss those days when anything was possible. My reference to them as "Philistines" was undoubtedly drawn from Susan Simmons' father in "My Teacher is an Alien". Early on I realized that the inclusion of the first person's name at the end was mean-spirited and uncalled for, and I erased it, but it was still legible so I blotted it out for publication anyway.
To Carrie, Whom I Mistreated
I could never actually give it to her, because she moved away as suddenly as she had moved in. But maybe someday she'll happen to see it here.
A Hispanohablantes Imaginarios
To the New Girl from Texas
For some reason, she took an instant (platonic) liking to me and we were becoming close friends when an unexpected schedule change completely derailed that.
To Another Girl from Study Hall
In ninth grade, I had a crush on this one senior girl in study hall and these other two senior girls, one of whom was her cousin, kept urging me to grow a spine and use their pickup lines on her. This was a letter to the not-cousin one.
The other side of the paper, which isn't worth my time to scan, says "fort zone on a daily basis. Now I am much happier"
To the Same Girl and Her Friend
Yep. I just didn't know when to quit. Even now, it kind of scares me to see how neurotic I was. Bonus points if you know where the phrase "whelk's chance in a supernova" comes from, and extra bonus points if you even know what a whelk is. The "obvious reason" I didn't play soccer was that our school only had a girls' team.
Same Thing, Take Two
I never even printed this one. I probably shouldn't have posted it either.
To the "Ludicrous Larry"
This one was meant to be emailed to the school newspaper but never was, which is just as well since it's very poorly written despite not being nearly as embarrassing as the previous one or the one before that.
To Jessica from EFY
Including one of the counselors, there were four gorgeous Jessicas in my Especially For Youth group, "Called Today". This letter was to one of them, before she unfriended me for whatever reason. Apparently there's a page missing between the second and third ones, or maybe I just had a stupid moment and skipped a line while writing it. Something about losing her phone number, apparently. The two letters mentioned at the beginning are not included here because I actually did send them, and the pickup line referenced was "Can I take your picture? I need to show Santa what I want for Christmas." That story is told more fully in my essay "In Defense of Pickup Lines".
To Elder Tabor
After a brief stint of hating each other's guts, we were quite close growing up but then I moved for college and then he went on a mission and I never contacted him there, though I intended to. It's just as well I never sent this letter from late 2012 because my assessment of the girl's behavior, like my assessment of most human behavior, was totally mistaken. But I still love Indians.
And of course, let us not forget this one.