Today you’ll hear a letter about eggs, my response to a marketer, a postcard to a politician, and note to one of my oldest friends.
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- Letter Talk is written and produced by me, and my sister Amy edits my writing. This episode features music from Kevin MacLeod.
Letters
Dearest Egg Nutrition Center,
Thank you for sending your quarterly newsletter to my work office. I hope you will not mind that I read the newsletter even though it was addressed to Ellen. I regret to inform you that Ellen is dead… Actually I don’t know that at all, but there’s definitely nobody in my office with that name. Or maybe there is, and you guys almost blew somebody’s witness protection cover. I’d ask around, but I’m the type of person to stir my coffee with a pen in order to avoid going to kitchen because people might be there who want to talk to me.
I noticed the note on the back that said some authors were compensated for their articles, and I wondered if that means I could write some articles for the newsletter. I’m not a qualified nutritionist, but I do eat a lot of eggs. I’m also not a journalist, which is weird because I actually have a journalism degree. I’m just a classic fan of eggs, especially since whatever was causing me to fart too much after eating eggs has decreased dramatically in the last few years. Maybe it was bread that was making me fart? I’m not sure. I may have to contact the Bread Nutrition Center for further information. I could probably write some nice haikus about eggs, or collect some people’s favorite opinions on eggs.
Did the Egg Nutrition Center get affected by Twitter changing their default avatar? It used to be an egg, which I’m sure was great buzzmarketing for actual eggs. Now when someone is going to shout slurs at you and call you mean names it’s a little outline of a person, which really is more accurate. I figure that all publicity is good publicity right? So, I wanted to ask.
Anyway, I read your entire newsletter on the can, because I’m trying to use social media less. Turns out before the days of social media, we still wasted time on the toilet, but instead we read magazines and newsletters.
There were a few articles in the newsletter about athletes, and I wanted to check in and make sure that I could eat eggs even if I’m not an athlete? I’ve been going on this whole time about eating eggs while not being super athletic. I figured it was probably fine because every time I went to buy eggs, nothing happened. If I wasn’t allowed to, I figured there would some sort of egg police who would slap the eggs out of my hand, thus dropping them to the ground and breaking all 12. It makes you wonder if it was a good call to create an egg police force if they’re not protecting the eggs, but actually harming them. Really makes you think.
Before I head out, what do you guys think about egging people’s houses? On one hand, it ruins precious eggs faster than an egg police patrol, but on the other hand you get really good at throwing things, thus making you a better athlete, which makes you eat more eggs. It’s really a tough call.
Thanks again for sending the newsletter.
Yours in Eggselence,
Alyssa
***
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for the Christmas card. I’m sorry I didn’t send you one, even though I verified your address and everything. With moving to my new place and getting my life back together, I just didn’t get around to sending any cards to anybody. Also, Christmas cards have gotten weird for me because I bought a pack for $3 dollars in 2009 and I’m not sure how many came in it, but if I had to guess, I would say roughly 7,000. I try to use them up little by little every year, but even that seems to be living on the edge because I’m terribly afraid of sending the same card to someone two years in a row. So I find myself in an anxious quagmire, but I don’t want to throw the cards out and buy new cards every year because it feels wasteful.
Anyway, I wanted to write you to say that I miss you very much! It’s been too long since my last visit to Idaho.
I also wanted to thank you being such a good friend to me all these years. I’m grateful for your becoming my friend to begin with. I remember hanging out as teens, but we came from separate worlds: I was an argyle-wearing emo dirtbag and you were a pink-haired punk. I remember espousing my love of pop punk (especially New Found Glory at the time) and you said, “If it’s pop it’s not punk” and probably, for emphasis, put on your bomber jacket with a Misfits patch. I might have just grimaced because as a teen there was still so much I didn’t know about how the world worked. Oh how little we all knew.
As a teen one of my goals was to merely understand the basic concept of the stock market. My thought: “I don’t fucking get it: it’s a bunch of men in suits shouting and talking on the phone, how do people make money on that? When I yell on the phone, the only thing that happens is my dad comes into my room and tells me to be quiet because the noise would lower the property values. It’s a perplexing thought coming from the same man who bought a 12-year-old Alyssa a drum set.”
But I digress. Some of my favorite moments ever in life were hanging with you and Marvin in his parent’s living room in high school and college. The hacky sack, TV, old school video games, it was so much fun. By the way, I have to vent to you: it is very difficult to find people in the east coast who will hacky sack with you. Especially in DC. DC people have no time for hacky sack. They have to hurry up because they have go somewhere quickly so they can immediately be angry there. SCHEDULES MATTER.
When you and Marvin moved away, one by one, Reno got a little darker for me, because I knew I would miss you guys. Many of my friends grew out of Reno and started leaving. Eventually I did too. It makes sense for the people who have left though, at some point some of us need to do it to grow and move forward.
Speaking of moving forward, I hope your plan of further education is going well. I’ve always admired how smart and crafty you are, especially since I went to undergrad, finished and was like, “never again with this schooling thing, this takes many, many hours, so that cuts into my hacky sack time too much. Priorities, am I right?”
Check yes or no to this box if I’m right:
Am I right?
□ Yes □ No
But seriously, I’m proud of you, I’m proud to be your friend, and to have been your friend for this long. I hope when we’re old fogies I’m sending you hologram letters or drone postcards or whatever we will be doing in the future. Talk to you again soon!
Your Buddy,
Alyssa
P.S. Tell Marvin not to worry, I will write to him someday, too. 🙂