The sophistication and detail of the letters, of a 6th grader (so around 11/12, although I think he may have been 13) is quite impressive! He must have gotten a lot of his English class writing practice from these notes; I can say this, as I remember he was the most popular boy in the grade, with a black belt in karate too(!), whoa, hahaha (yeah right... in the middle of the cornfields in Indiana, highly unlikely), and a smooth operator with the girls, before he got in with the not-so-great, monster truck loving, pill popping, smoking, high/stoned crowds later on as we became teenagers. I was the new kid on the block, moving in from the suburbs of Detroit MI, I looked different in a predominantly caucasian environment, and from an apparently stable home life (to put the situation into context; the headquarters of the KKK were in the county or township adjacent to ours, and the area was well known for having the earliest and highest percentage of pre-teen/teenage pregnancies, and my hand was one of the only ones in the class raised, as we were asked about parents whom were still together).
I was oblivious to any of the realities of life, I was still a kid who was maybe only beginning to get out of the 'boys have cooties' phase; I remember to this day, as he was 'asking me out' during recess, out on the school field/playground, my response was 'ummm, I'm not sure if I can, I have to ask my mom first, I'll let you know later', and the group of boys and girls stood and stared at me like I was from another planet... I mean how was I supposed to know!? And back then, I used to turn literally bright red in the face when put in embarrassing or 'on the spot' situations, so you could imagine the caliber of red I was turning!
But there is such innocence, and honesty in the letters, it warms your heart, with even a bit of drama, that I find so adorable! I mean you'd be hard pressed to find a man these days putting his whole heart on the line in this manner; well, such is growing up and becoming adults with responsibilities and other aspects to consider.
Maybe this will conjure up your experience of firsts in love, down memory lane.
-M
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Touching.
ReplyDeleteWhole my life I experience meaningful plays. It started as soon as I could walk (!) that I wanted to find my wife, and I was friends with a girl a few doors from my house. Then at school 4 years of age there was Kitty -and now it comes- looking very Asian. But protocol on Catholic school said that boys need to play with boys and should say that girls are stupid. So the sister put Kitty in another class; expressing the long road I had ahead. I cannot make a too long story but one of the stories or experiences or plays you could say in my life is the meeting of Sandra in a setting full of symbols where amongst other very meaningful things, I had to walk for hours and hours on a route with "no end" to a place where appeared to be a.o. a fallus shaped tower -symbolizing that I had to wait VERY LONG before being with my wife. To cut this short and skip too complicated explanations; WE ALL EXPERIENCE PLAYS IN OUR LIVES WHERE REALITY IS SHOWED AND EXPERIENCED AND CONTACTATMOSPHERE. And the typical thing is that we participate in eachothers destiny. Even the writing on the wall is a together experience. SO NEVER THROW AWAY THAT LETTER.