Letter to a Penpal

Dear Penpal:

I have been reading your dispatches with quite some interest (though I can’t figure out exactly how much without looking at the thermometer). Your adventures remind me of the escapades of my own youth. It’s true I’ve led a sedentary life these past thirty-five years; but my first year on this earth was full of zany frolics that are sure to inspire any reader to go outside and get some fresh air.

When I was two months old I set out in search of my own Encylopedie Larousse, having worn my old Brittanica into a dog-eared, endpaper-stained mess through heavy use. I wanted a Larousse now so as to have something a little more festive to wear at parties.

And so I purchased two steamer tickets for New York. (I was only one passenger, but I figured you never know when you might fall in love.) The problem of how I expected to get from Pittsburgh to New York via steamer (across landlocked Pennsylvania) had not occurred to me—after all, I was only two months old.

Once I arrived in New York (I shan’t bore you with the details of how I actually made the trip, though perhaps you would have been entertained by my account of the flying bowling alley), I set out in search of the French dictionary store. But—wouldn’t you know it!—they were closed for lunch. So instead I secured a starring role for myself in a Broadway musical based on the life of Horace Streudel, a fetal chimpanzee whose mother miscarried early in her pregnancy. The parents went on to successfully conceive again, but Horace’s story was a brief one and did not charm the critics. So there I was, two and a half months old, with one Broadway flop under my belt and struggling under the burden of typecasting. Clearly, it was time to consider a change of career.