Doing my part to support the troops...

The following was a letter I wrote to a buddy of mine who was doing his patriotic duty to help keep America from being blowed up! He's a good kid and one of his few requests was to have letters written to him while he was away. Written letters mind you, not e-mails, because I can only assume an e-mail doesn't always feel as personal as a hand written letter. Well, I did the best I could. Stay tuned, because I promised to finish the second half of this tale and seeing as how I'm a man of my word...I'll try my best. Enjoy.

and so it begins:

Hey my little pubic hair covered sugar cube,


So word on the street is you need some written interaction with the outside world eh? I would hand write you a letter, but after a while I get lazy and my writing starts to look like I was writing with my feet while my toes were cramped. If I type out a letter it makes it look like I’m working, which in turn gives me ample time to write out pointless ramblings for your reading pleasure. I will also apologize in advance for any type-o’s, I tend to type quick and only fiarly accurate. To be honest, last time I’ve actually written a letter to someone was when I was in the 5th grade.

We were given an assignment to write a letter telling a little something about ourselves and these letters in turn would be given to students in another school to sort through and reply with. I can loosely recall having some hope that a cute girl who was really into transformers and didn’t have hair on her fingers would snatch up my letter and the rest would be unimaginable bliss. Again, I was in the 5th grade and probably had a better chance of getting diddled by the local ice-cream man who had man boobs. SOOO, after a week or two we get our letters back and to my surprise the lucky chap who picked my letter was also given the cursed moniker of DAMON! I would have been ecstatic at this point if it wasn’t for the little asshole who lived next door to me. His name was Amen Bejhrens (my name is Damon Barron. In case you forgot). He was pretty much the same build except he was white and blond. If this kid was any bigger of an asshole he would have been inside out. Alas his story will be left for another day.

I don’t really remember the cross-town DAMON’s last name but the letter was your basic kid bullshit. “ I really like star wars. Do you like star wars? My favorite movie is Last Starfighter. Have you seen Last Starfighter? I have a BMX. What kind of bike do you have? Do you have a brother or sister? What is your school like? I think it’s cool that we both are named Damon!” I knew this guy was full of shit when he threw in that crap about how cool it was to both be named Damon. I was only in the fifth grade but had enough variations of my name, given by kids and ignorant adults non-the-less, under my belt to despise the name Damon (and the last name Barron too) that I had tried to get my parents to refer to me as D.J. Barron. I thought that was hip and had a classy ring to it when yelled across a mall or field, “HEY DJ! WHAT’S UP!?” “Yo DJ?! You coming over after school?!” This sounded like heaven, until my father felt the need to say it while drawing out the two simple letters, “Oh, that’s what you want us to call you now? No problem DEEEEE JAAAAAY!” “DEEEEE JAAAAY! Want some Mcdonald’s?” LISA! Stop teasing DEEEE JAAAAY!” I’d say the nickname lasted less than a week before I went back to Damon. HA HA DAD! JOKES ON YOU! YOUR GAY NOW AND I’M NOT! Bastard.

We write back and forth for a couple of months and what was casual interest in writing to someone who I’d never met slowly turned into a chore. I hated writing this kid! He never had anything entertaining to say! All this kid did was write something about what he liked and then ask if I liked it too? I remember getting pissed because we HAD to write him a full effing page of kid banter! Finally after his last bit of literary masterpiece I get fed up and blast him into tiny bits with a scathing letter letting him know that he is the most annoying pen pal I’d ever had. Knowing full well he was the only pen pal I’d ever had I wasn’t about to let him know that I lost my pen pal cherry to some cross town tard! I was prepared to make up stories of prison pen pals who send me broken smokes lifted off someone they shived for their scoop of apple sauce in the mess hall. I really let this kid have it. There was no stopping the fury of my thick ass blue lead pencil as the pent up anger and frustration from situations beyond him being my pen pal was channeling through my fingertips into the pencil and onto my brown writing paper. I can remember looking up and seeing other kids smiling and making little doodles with crap like BFF written underneath them as they wrote to their “cool” pen pals. NO, NO! I had to hear about how my pen pal got to finally be B.A. Barracus when the kids on his block played “A-team”. I think I ended the letter with “If you don’t have anything cool to write then I’m going to ask for another pen pal!” I merrily walk my envelope up to my teacher and sat back at my desk with the satisfaction of knowing that I might 1) get a new pen pal or 2) get a fun letter with some sort of treat included in it like that damn Brian who sat across from me got! What was the deal with that!? We all knew he was queer! What the hell could he have been writing to this pen pal of his?!!

A week or so after our letters were sent our teacher announces she has a BIG surprise for us! Beaming, she proceed to tell us how our last letters were sent out and instead of our pen pals replying, we were going to go to their school and meet them in person!!! She even followed it up with a “ISN’T THAT GREAT!?” Some kids squealed with joy while others high fived or pulled their fists into their sides while letting out an excited “YESSS!” What did I do you ask? Well I just winced and grabbed my stomach. What effing luck! I send out a scolding letter and now I have to meet the guy?! What if he was furious and wanted to kick my ass?! What if he didn’t? I still had to spend the whole fricken afternoon with him talking about why he thought go-bot’s were waaay cooler than Transformers! (which they weren’t) I was mortified and already thought of how I was going to have to feign illness and skip out on this dreaded school trip…

TO BE CONTINUED

Well Kevin, I have to get back to work now. I will make sure to finish up the story and perhaps provide some more sunshine on your front porch with another tale from the life of DJB.

Have a great Holiday and be safe! I’ll chat with you later.


Your Friend in Middle Earth,

DJB