Dear So and So....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is a place to write a letter to someone whom will never read it. Possibly a mild venting, maybe a gentle reminder, a Memo to an coworker that you wish you could send, maybe a Thank You to that Anonymous soul who did a kind deed to you.

Dear Guy Who Fixed my bike on the spot all those years ago
I have never forgotten the time you took to unravel and cut the loose wire from my wheel. It was a shining kindness to a 13 year kid trying to carrying/drag her beloved messed up banana seat bike home.
Thank you.

2

Dear Steve Jobs:

I have been a loyal user of your products for many years now, and always (well, almost always) defend them to naysayers. If you happen to have any real cool still-secret products coming down the pike and need someone to test them, I’m your girl.

Seriously, call me.

h.

3

never mind

4

Dear Brother,

When we lent you that laptop years ago and you brought it back broken and didn’t take any responsibility for it and we didn’t even get an “I’m sorry”, we were pissed, but we got over it. Many years later, when you hounded us for the dead carcass so your buddy could take the hard drive out and get your vacation pictures off of it, we didn’t say anything either. And now it’s gotten even more over the top when you made the comment about “maybe you should fix it and give it to my son for his birthday.” Really, Bro, stop with the laptop stuff. It’s a sore subject, and best left undiscussed. You got your damn pictures and we’re still waiting for the “I’m sorry.”

Thanks,

Sis

5

Dear Students’ Parents,

Please remember that everything you do in front of your children is a lesson you are teaching them. When you call them in sick for school, do the same for your work, and hang out all day, you are teaching dishonestly. When you smoke, you are teaching poor health maintenance. When you say, " I never needed any of that," regarding school, you are teaching that school is not important. When you allow your child to be disrespectful to you, you are teaching them they can be disrespectful.

Everything is a lesson. Everything.

Don’t be negative. Don’t be degrading. Don’t spoil. Educate your child at home beyond what the schools do. Teach them to care for humanity and not obsess on themselves.

You teach them far more than I do, but if you don’t do your share, I can only do so much.

Sincerely,

Mahaloth, a concerned teacher and quasi-parent to your child

6

Dear Federal Employees Who Steal Transit Subsidies In Many Different Ways,

Please stop doing this. It’s highly illegal. $52 dollars a month isn’t a big deal to me but I’d rather have my subsidy than not and I don’t appreciate you putting all of us under investigation for your dishonesty. Some of the benefits here aren’t all that bad and I HATE that you are putting one of my favourite ones in jeopardy.

Sincerely,

A.

7

Dear Susan,

Sorry I almost ran over you that day downtown in the summer of 1989 or 1990. I saw the guy behind you, and saw that he was well back from the curb. What I completely did not see until it was too late was that he was pushing you.

Glad we didn’t get to meet that day, as it would certainly have meant I was waiting for the police to come take me away.

Hope you’re enjoying retirement.

Knead

8

Dear D— and A—,

My husband and I were very happy for you when you called and told us you were getting married. We all went out to dinner and talked about wedding plans, because you wanted to pick our brains about our own recent wedding. We enjoyed the evening, just as we had always enjoyed our friendship with both of you.

When we didn’t get an invitation, we were very slightly surprised, but figured that you’d decided to have a smaller affair.

However, when we discovered that we were the only members of our mutual student organization that had not been invited, including friends without nearly the long history that we all have together, we were hurt. We sucked it up, gave you a very nice, personalized wedding present, and never mentioned it. But I still remember it, and it makes me sad.

–E

9

Dear residents of Carson City, and the counties of Douglas, Lyon and Washoe:

Please pay attention to the speed limit signs. For both over and under. If you are driving 35 in a 55 zone, in clear weather, in a perfectly good car, you are going to get into trouble, either by a police officer pulling you over (yes, you can indeed get pulled over for driving too slow - it’s a danger!) or by getting hit by a car who doesn’t notice that you’re dumb enough to drive 20 under the speed limit for no reason whatsoever.

IN THAT SAME VEIN, neighborhood streets have a speed limit of 25, 15 in some areas. Pay attention to those speed limits, they are there for a reason. You may whine and bitch about it being too slow now, but when you’re pulling some kid’s guts out of your front grill you might think twice about it as the police lights pull up.

And in THAT same vein - parents, please. Teach your children. I can tolerate toddlers and younger elementary school students dashing out into traffic, but once your child reaches the age of about 12, this needs to stop. I mean it. They should be smarter than that at that age and it really concerns me.

Sincerely

Your friendly neighborhood concerned motorist.

10

To whomever stole my bike yesterday:

I have left it beside my house for the last six years without a worry. And you know why? Because it’s a pretty safe neighbourhood.

But really, because it’s a 20 yr old, smallish girls bike, with no hand brakes, no gears, (a coaster like we all learned on), with a rusty basket and a piece of painters tape holding a tiny stick in place to keep the back fender from rubbing against the upright, a bell, and a rusted lock on the carrier. It could not possibly have been worth even $20.

And rest assured I will be watching for it. For months, no doubt.

And if I see you I intend to push you down and take my bike back!

I can get another bike, but I was very attached to that one, humble though it was.

Elbows, now on foot!

11

Dear A.,

I know I didn’t treat you very well during the last few months of our relationship, and one thing in particular must have seemed like a slap in the face, and I regret that. I think we had always been just a little bit wrong for each other, and I’d been trying a little bit too hard to make things mesh, and I was exhausted and irritable from that effort. It’s probably as well that things ended when they did, though I took it badly at the time, but I wish we had kept in touch. We had some good times and you showed me some very cool places, and I’d like to be able to talk to you and thank you for that and maybe laugh some over the memories. I wish you the best, wherever you are, and I hope you’ve found someone who is right for you.

N.

Dear P.,

I know you aren’t supposed to flirt with your students, but you picked a really good moment to break that rule back in December of '97, and no, I didn’t take it for more than it was. But it brightened up an otherwise miserable day, and made a gawky undergraduate feel very grown up.

N.

Dear E.,

I’ve often wondered why I never heard from you after you moved to Scotland. I would have liked to have visited. I hope things turned out well, and that living in Europe was all you wanted it to be; I’m still a little jealous after all these years. Miss you and the rest of the study abroad crowd – you were the one who kept in touch with people, until one day you didn’t, so I haven’t a clue what the rest of them are doing now. Anyway, I wish we could get together.

N.

12

To all the old men who sat around the stove at the back of my father’s store and kindly tolerated the presence of an inquisitive little girl:

An old woman holds you in her heart.

13

To ----:

I’m glad we’re able to keep being friends. It still hurts, though. I am perversely hoping it hurts for you as much as it does for me. I am still amazed that you’re able to ---- – ---- ---- --------- this fall; hell, I’m amazed that you’re still ---- — at all. I wish I could hate you for it. I could ruin your life so easily if I wanted to, I suppose. Has that ever crossed your mind? Or do you just assume that I’m not that kind of person? I suppose the fact that I’m still willing to be friends with you even after you ------- – ---- ---------- ---- – says a lot about what kind of person I am.

I’ll be able to forgive you completely, someday. Give me time.

===========

Dear --------:

You have no idea how grateful I’ve been for our friendship this past year. You always say how you feel that I’m always the one looking after you, but it’s really the other way around. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been there to help me deal with the insanity that is my life. I’m going to miss you so much.

14

To the Nice Man Who Fixed My Foot When I was a Little Kid:

I was scared to death, with a big inch long thorn stuck in my foot, through my little plastic flip flop. I had no idea how I was going to get home, I couldn’t walk, and if I touched the branch it was attached to, it hurt like mad. So you stopped and you talked to me and you had a look, then while you were talking to me you yanked it out quick! That hurt a lot! Then you told me to walk straight home and tell my mom.

I was in tears and scared and you were very nice. And I didn’t say thank you - mostly because at the time you really hurt me, but I understand why you did it now. And I did go straight home, and mom took me to the doctor, who told me how serious a deep puncture wound really was.

Thanks for helping, I’ve never forgotten.

Cheers,
G

15

Dear Upstairs Neighbors,
Thank you so very much for moving. It was an unexpected and delightful treat for me for after lo these many months of listening to your insane life. You are the only neighbors I ever had to both keep me up late and wake me up early. Every. Single. Day.

I am enjoying the precious peace and quiet until the next herd moves in.
Thanks again!
Love,

Me

16

Dear boy whom stucco is dating,

You have really terrible taste in music. I’m sorry, but you do. But I still like you :smiley:

Your music snob girl,
stucco

17

Dear Mom,

Thanks for never encouraging me. Thank you for never letting me join any teams or organizations.

Thanks for ignoring me when I told you I was depressed and felt empty inside in third grade. Thank you for taking me to a psychologist in fifth grade just because you got a letter from the school about my grades. Not because you cared about why I was failing, just because you had to.
Thank you for laughing at me crying in the car on the way to school in ninth grade because I felt so ugly and worthless. Because it’s just a phase, nothing to be taken seriously. Self esteem isn’t important to a fifteen year old girl.
Thanks for only giving a shit when I make you look bad.

-Your loving daughter

Dear Dad,

Real active role in parenting. Glad to know Mom has someone she can rely on to yell at me and fix the tv.

-Your loving daughter
I’m not resentful at all. Blah.

18

Dear multinational companies, and specially your human resources departments:

Please, please, please, learn about the laws of the different places where you work. Some geography would also be nice.
Insisting that a EU citizen can not apply for a job in a different EU country because your US lawyer claims that obtaining a work permit would be extremely long and expensive doesn’t just make you dumb: it can make you lose some of your best workers.
Offering medical insurance as an “additional benefit” in a country where medical insurance is required by law (i.e., not additional), just makes you look dumb.
Telling your workers from Strasbourg that they must move to Germany in order to work in Karlsruhe can cause the worker to reject the promotion, because he is not willing to move kids and spouse across the border, when Karlsruhe happens to be about half an hour away from his home… in bad traffic.

Thank you,

one of those employees you lost because of the “work permit” issue.

Dear companies that sell whatever it is you sell:

Please, if you offer a service, make sure you can provide it. If you say people can choose between getting their letters from you in a list of several languages, make sure that each customer really gets every letter in the language the customer chose. That includes your bills, your offers, the instructions on how to use your services.

If you offer the rental of a certain size of car in a certain location, please make sure than when a customer requests one with more than 48 hours advance, one is found. I don’t care whether you have to bring it from three villages away: if it’s not available, it should not be on the menu.

And oh: if your offers include the rental of Macs… don’t say “zero” virus. I know the french aren’t as notoriously litigious as Some Other People, but that’s the kind of stupidity that could get you reamed so hard you’d split in half, mk?

To every company that has a webpage:

Include a way to send you a generic email. That’s one which corresponds to “none of the above”, you morons!

To every company which equips its workers with laptops and VPN:

I know this is amazing news, but the purpose of those is being able to telecommute. Will you be able to understand this concept better if we come up with a shorter name?

19

Dear Ms. Rowling,
The world is waiting in girlish anticipation for the seventh installment of your book.

The entire world.

Not so long ago you were a single mom on welfare.
Good on you!

Sincerely,

A fan.

20

Dear MOTM:

Wake up and admit that you don’t know anything about women. Someone who’s had as many girlfriends as you have should have learned something about them by now, but perhaps all the drinking addled your brains. Try to make an effort to shake off that willful ignorance you seem to enjoy; it’s not doing you any good. I tell you this because I dig you much more than I should and so your faults piss me off much more than the faults of someone I don’t care about would.

Thanks, T, who is tired of your shit