OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES

Up until now I’ve done my best to share some of the more important things that have happened to me since I have been here in Morocco. I’ve breached important topics such as synchronized station wagons, speed walking, free-balling and even going into the wrong sauna. In all honesty, I have plenty of ideas that go along with those type of earth shattering topics…in fact some might be worth repeating (reference Brad Paisley’s lyrics “Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once”…I don’t know if they’ll let me come back to the sauna if I try that one again though). Anyway, the point of me saying this is that in spite of all of my great ideas that I’d like to share, I had to change what I was planning on writing about because of a package I received in the mail last week. One of my childhood friends has a 3rd grade class and decided to teach them the art of writing letters. While this is clearly a worthless skill to have these days, I nonetheless was the benefactor of over 30 letters. I’ve received these types of letters before and while they are very cute, they often remind me of, well, 3rd graders. Let’s be honest…3rd graders don’t always have the most insightful things to say, and there I was with over 30 letters that I felt obligated to read. I figured that if nothing else I could use my red pen and correct all of their mistakes and send them back to them. With that said, my writing is made easier this week due to Mrs. Glad’s 3rd grade class. While I will certainly have some comments along the way, these are unedited, word-for-word letters from her class. Let’s begin…

Dear Air-Force Friend,

Thank you for Friendship. Knock Knock, who’s There? Why did the old man put his car in the oven? He wanted a hotrod. Ha Ha Ha Ha. Do you like “Fresty” as a Friend?

From,

Cameron

As I read that first letter, I was left speechless…I mean seriously?! Cameron’s use of punctuation was atrocious; his attempt at humor made me sick to my stomach, and he butchered my name. Quite frankly I couldn’t get passed the idea that I still had over 30 more of these letters to read. In Cameron’s defense, he did draw a pretty amazing picture on the back of his letter. In fact, every kid included a drawing on the back of their letter. As much as I was disturbed with Cameron’s punctuation and poor selection of jokes, I was even more disturbed by his picture. On the back of his letter was a VERY graphic picture of me killing no less than a dozen different enemies. I was honored that he realized that a dozen men with machine guns were no challenge to my amazing military skills, but disturbed that this 3rd grader seemed to take a certain amount of joy in drawing my attempted assassin’s body parts strung all over the ground (although a fairly accurate depiction). I soon learned that he was not the only one to draw a picture of this nature. While there was an occasional picture of a rainbow or unicorn, the majority of the pictures were similar to Cameron’s. Mrs. Glad (Anna-Lisa) did mention that she too was slightly disturbed. However she wrote, “We usually don't promote violence, but hey, if the bad guy needs to die, so be it.” I couldn’t argue with logic like that, so I just continued on with the daunting task of reading these letters.

Dear Air Force Friend,

Thank you Frosty For Fighting For my country. I hope you don’t die out there. you’r saving my country thanks. That’s cool that you fly an airplane and you get to shoot down other air planes. I hope you win out there. Good Luck. I hope you get back to your family.

Sincerely,

Kanyon

There was little question that while Kanyon had a very long way to go in understanding apostrophes and correct capitalization, he was clearly on to something…at such a tender age, he realized that not only was it cool to shoot down other airplanes (seriously Kanyon…airplane is one word), but he understood that I was personally responsible for saving his country. I suddenly found myself anxious to continue reading these amazing words of wisdom. Letter after letter, they all paid honor to me…a living hero! None of them even mentioned the high-profile terrorists that I had personally brought to justice, and yet I could tell that they somehow sensed something special about me. It wasn’t until I read a few more letters that I really understood the level of their gratitude.

Dear Air-force Friend,

Thank you for savening our world. I’m proud That you are doing this because That meauns that you are a Hero and I hope That you can see your family agen and my favoit color is purple and pink and I hope That you like your job and I like Heros because Heros are nice.

Sincerely,

Natash

I really don’t know how to explain it. Although I clearly could not see past the horrific grammar and spelling (Anna-Lisa…are you requiring your students to even try and spell the words correctly, or are you just praising the effort), I had finally been given credit for saving the world. I’ll be honest…I had not even given myself that much credit. Those of you that know me are well aware that I am always checking to see if there is a military discount just about anywhere I go. My friends give me a hard time about this. I hope that now that they realize I am responsible for saving the world that it doesn’t seem like too much to ask to have 10% off of my meal at Chipotle! While I was fairly certain that Natash had clearly justified my plea for a military discount , I had one more letter that was about to seal the deal.

Dear Air-Force friend,

I’m thankful your in the Air-Force because their wil Be no school. Ther wil Be no houses. Ther will be no TV. I’m very, very, very happy your in the Air-Force.

From,

Isaiah

Isaiah had done it…he had brought this hardened warrior to tears. It had nothing to do with my #1 pet peeve of incorrectly using “your” when clearly he should have used “you’re”. Nope…he had brought me to a clear realization. It’s one thing to save the world. It’s a completely different thing to know that without you there would be no school, houses, and most importantly, television. All of the nights I’ve spent in Morocco watching Snooker and Speed Walking, the countless hours of football games and reality television shows…all of that was due to one person…ME! I sobbed for hours with that realization. Never had I been so moved!

So really, what is the point of this week’s blog? Well, as many of you know, I had a birthday this past week and needed some positive affirmation in my life. Learning that I was responsible for so many cool things made turning 40 seem like a trivial ordeal. So many of you should be grateful that I was simply born in the first place…which brings me to my closing comments (I know…I am long winded).

Along with Anna-Lisa’s letters was a wonderful birthday card that attempted to make fun of my old age. However, I quickly overcame that when I noticed a crisp 5 dollar bill resting inside the card. Anna-Lisa was the first (and only) person to respond to my earlier request to please pay me $5 for these wonderful blogs. Thanks to her I can now say that I now have had 2 paid writing gigs in my lifetime. By the way…it is clearly not too late to send your money…between Jen and I, we have now banked $245 for our writing. You can make the difference!

As a final note, let me say how much I really enjoyed both receiving and reading all of the letters from these kids! Any mail is always a welcome surprise here…even if you’re gramer and speling is’nt the best.

Until next time, enjoy watching television…you wouldn’t have it without me!