Dear Sir, 15 years later you are still a jerk.
Our Sunday paper publishes pictures of couples announcing their engagements and celebrating anniversaries. I’ve lived here almost all my life so I read through them to see if there’s any six-degree connection.
This week– in the anniversary section there he was. An old man and his wife squinting into the camera. No horns or other evil man accoutrement were visible– and yet, fifteen years (or so) ago, he seemed much more powerful.
Back in college I was editor of the student newspaper. Every week I wrote a column or drew a cartoon. I tried to be pithy and clever. Sometimes I was– other times not so much. I’d get feedback from the faculty, my dormmates, the college staff and the occasional prisoner letter (our college had a sattelite program for incarcerated men. Insert joke here). One week I wrote something– I no longer remember what, exactly, and it brought about a strongly worded letter from a college alumnist. He threatened, because of my words, to withdraw all his financial support from the college. The letter was long and mean and left me with a sick feeling in my stomach.
The letter came on a Wednesday. I know that because my Dad used to drive to my college every Wednesday to eat lunch with me. Usually we sat in the cafeteria with my pals– they anticipated Dad’s visits, too– and they and I would take horrified awe in Dad’s appreciation for our cafeteria food. The Wednesday that letter came I met Dad at the door of our student union, as usual. He immediately asked what was wrong and I handed him the letter and stood, biting the inside of my cheek, while he read it. When he finished he folded it back into the envelope and looked me in the eye. I burst into tears. Dad led me to his truck and drove silently away from the college.
For my part, I now had a mixture of tears and snot in what Oprah would call “the ugly cry”– Dad handed me his “hankie” and I cleaned myself up. And then he put things in perspective, “Who is this guy?” I hiccuped and sobbed my way through explaining he was a supporter of the school–. Dad reminded me that he was, too, on top of tuition and fees and year-end appeals. Dad also pointed out that logical people don’t make or withhold donations on the basis of what a student writes in a student publication.
There was more– and it was, given my Dad’s temper, delivered in a calm and measured manner. In the end Dad had me laughing about the entire situation– we imagined what this little mean-spirited letter writer’s life was like that he would have reacted to my words in such a way. We felt sorry for him. He did not have what we did– a lapful of hotdogs and fries and onion rings from the rootbeer stand so that I would not have to explain my blotchy face to my classmates. We spent the entire lunch in Dad’s truck. He dropped me back to my dorm door restored again to my usual Wednesday mode– launching another issue of the paper. My friends were disappointed that we’d “eaten out” but didn’t ever know about the cause of my absence.
And now, 15 years (or so) later, the letter writer has, I’m absolutely sure, no idea of the effect of his letter. Perhaps he got what he wanted– he managed, for a while, to terrify a student learning the process of writing and publishing. His threats were taken seriously, albeit, by a girl too inexperienced to know that his reaction was inappropriate and his threats empty. He never felt the wrath of our sarcasm or knew that we spent the better part of my father’s lunch hour (that stretched long that day) mocking his, we imagined, troll like figure.
I’m glad he wrote that letter now. It gave me a great moment with my Dad. One that I’ve stored away for use with Jack, should a need arise.
And it’s why I try to write notes of praise now and then when I like something– to offset the more common acid penned missives of people like him.
