Column # 226

In love of Legs: a letter to a child

Living the Life of Holly
By Holly Winter
© 2006
In Love of Legs: a letter to a child

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...........I eat.................................. .....Wildflowers???????................9/11 is a day................ME with makeup

11/6/2006 10:08:53 PM

Hi Rachael-bachael-machael-ra-lachael,

I just found a letter in my mailbox from you, sweet niece who lives oh-so-far-away, and I think it took way way way too too too too long for it to get here and I’m bummed that I didn’t get it a long long long time ago so I could write back a long time ago. I think you wrote it last summer. So. To pay you back, I’m adding some photos with my letter.

The first photo is me eating. Because. Maybe you didn’t realize that we eat in Denver. Really. We do. We tend to eat three times a day, more if we eat dessert, which we try to do as much as we can. Eating is something I’m particularly great at, which you can see in this photo. I’ve never entered a competition for eating, because I’m always too busy eating to enter eating competitions. Do you think I should enter a eating competition? (Yes or NO) (Circle one….and tell me your answer the next time you see me.)

The second photo was taken in Crested Butte, Colorado, the place where I went camping last summer with my friend, Theresa. Everywhere we went there were wildflowers. Now. The definition of wild flowers means that nobody plants the flowers, they plant themselves. (I guess all the flowers have their own little shovels that they tuck in their back pockets and when their seeds are ripe, they dig little holes into the ground so they can plant their own seeds.) (Personally I found it hard to believe, that flowers have figured out how to plant themselves, and kept looking for an old man, maybe someone named Herbert, who secretly runs around planting wildflowers when nobody is looking. I worried that ‘Herbert’ might yell at me for walking in his garden every time I walked across a field, which made it a little bit difficult to enjoy walking across fields.)

The next photo is of me in my classroom where I am trying to explain to my eight-year-old students that 9/11 is actually a day, and not a news show on television. My students don’t believe me. They think I manipulated the calendar to match the news, not the other way around. (Do you think I’m not a good teacher? Or that maybe I just need to work on teaching this lesson a little longer?) (Bad Teacher, Little Longer) (Circle One if you feel like it.)

Ok. And. The last photo is of me wearing ‘makeup.’ Because a friend suggested I might look good with more makeup, so I decided to surprise her by putting some makeup on my photo. This made my friend mad, which is fine with me. Because I think that making me wear more makeup is kind of a ‘mad’ idea, don’t you? (Yes or NO) (Pick one)

I think you should get a job and save your money so you could come to Denver to visit me. Why don’t you do that? I would love that. Come and visit me. Then you could take your own pictures of Denver. And I could show you all the fun things in Denver like the traffic and the best places to get a sunburn and places so high up in the mountains that there is so little oxygen that it is hard to breathe that you get a headache. Wouldn’t that be fun? AND you could help me clean the bathroom. (I don’t like to do that much) AND then, when we were tired of all of that, we could run up and down the stairs over and over and over again until we get so tired we want to nap.

Doesn’t that sound like FUN?

Well. There are other things we could do too, some even FUNNER than those listed, but if I told you about them, your head would get so so so excited it might explode, and that would be painful, and I don’t like pain, do you? (YES or NO) (Circle one….just for yourself….so you know yourself better…..)

Ok. Now. Let’s talk about that Sadie bone that you and Gabrielle were fighting over. I mean. I understand what happened. My poor doggie, Sadie, who came to live at your house, died. You buried her in that fabulous heart-shaped grave. Then came the floods, which threatened the very grave she was buried in. And as if by some strange miracle, after the floods went away and the weather changed, one of her clean-white-bones somehow made it to the lawn, which is where Gabrielle found it.

I think it’s a good thing that you waited till she was dead till you started fighting over her leg bone. And. I do think that it’s too bad that YOU didn’t get the bone, since she became YOUR dog. So. I’ve decided to make it up to you the only way I know how.

If I should die, before you do, you can have one of MY leg bones, to keep. You can hang it on your wall, or use it to drum with or it might be handy to stir soup. I think you’ll be really glad that you waited to get my leg bone, rather than Sadie’s, because my leg is so much L-O-N-G-E-R than Sadie’s, and I think there will be MANY more things you can do with my leg, than Gabrielle will ever be able to do with a far shorter dog’s bone.

Like. I’ll bet you could play baseball with my leg bone. I bet the other kids would quit the game if you showed up with your dead aunt’s leg for a bat, and then you could win by default. How cool would that be?

I know. Offering you my leg is a huge sacrifice. You’re welcome. But. Please. Don’t remove it from my body until you are SURE, I mean POSITIVE that I’m dead. Because if I’m only sleeping and I wake up and hobble outside and find you playing baseball with my leg, I might get a little mad. (I’m being totally honest here.) And. I don’t mind if you want to let them bury me first, then dig me up after a while, or after a flood, so you can wait till my leg-bone is clean. It might be easier that way.

For now on, I’m going to consider my right leg as YOUR leg, ok? Especially because that is the leg that had the operation when I was younger, and I think it would be the more interesting leg to own. If you’d rather have me left leg, please let me know right away, before I do something rash and offer it away to someone else, not that I have anyone in mind, but you never know.

So. I am so sorry that it took me so long to write to you and I will try very much to visit my mailbox more often, because there might be a letter from you. But if I don’t go to the mailbox everyday, it will be because I’m so busy jogging and rollerblading and marching around the streets of Denver taking care of YOUR RIGHT leg, so it might be in the best possible shape for you to take it over one day.

I do love you so much. Really. So much. More than chocolate, lollypops and grape soda. More than pudding, lime jell-o and frogs legs. (Actually I’ve never had frogs legs and I don’t want to have them, but I’m quite certain I love you more than frogs legs. If I ever do eat frogs legs and find that I love them more than I love you, I’ll be sure to let you know right away. But. I doubt that could ever happen. Really. I just don’t think that could ever, ever, ever happen. Turkey legs I love (see photo above), but not more than you. So. I don’t think it is at all possible that I could love frogs legs more than you, either.)

So. Please give yourself a kiss from me. And. Then. I’ll be happier knowing you’ve been kissed.

Love and kisses (see sentence above),
Your
Favorite Aunt Holly

P.S. In case you are wondering: No sugar was consumed in the writing of this letter. Nor was any possible alcoholic beverage. And. Nothing here in this letter was plagiarized (stolen) in any form from any source. I did eat a spoonful of peanut butter earlier, so it is possible that the words herein are part of a ‘Peanut Butter Effect’ whereas those who eat peanut butter write only the truth. You might try it.

P.P.S. Don’t try the Peanut Butter Effect if you are working on a paper for school. It might be dangerous to your grades.

P.P.P.S Don’t try the Peanut Butter Effect if you are writing out a shopping list. You might have only one thing on your list: candy.

P.P.P.P.S. Don’t tell ANYONE about the Peanut Butter Effect. (If you do, you must suffer terrible punishment: eat a spoonful of jelly, right away.)

P.P.P.P.P.S. Let me know if you need some kind of letter, for insurance purposes, stating that my leg is yours upon my death. Or maybe it would be easier to tattoo your name somewhere on my leg?????????????What's your favorite color?

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Holly answers all e-mails. E-mail her:
holly@livingthelifeofholly.com

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