Posts tagged with "letters"

Heard you got pregnant.

Maybe you faked it, cause you had a con­ve­nient mis­car­riage when you got thrown out. Now you’re real­ly preg­nant, and the new guy is let­ting you stay.

It could have been me, they said. That was my first thought too. But I’m not weak and you’re not here.

Until last week, I still had your num­ber in my phone, but to be hon­est, it was just so I could know not to pick up. Sorry I nev­er called. I thought about it once or twice, when I want­ed a per­son to play with cause so many songs sound bet­ter with a har­mo­ny. But I’m too good at com­ing up with rea­sons to be alone. If I saw you again, I’d ask how you remem­bered the chords of your friend’s song cause I can’t even remem­ber the words to some of my favourite tracks. And if you ever record­ed your­self singing a song for your old grand­pa to see.

I still have that out-of-focus pho­to of us on the couch, look­ing into the cam­era, you on top. I’m prob­a­bly nev­er going to do any­thing with it.

To the person who broke into my car last night

You stole:

  • My Apple ear­buds, which I did­n’t care much about, cause they’re shit­ty and feel like stale muffins in your ears. The only rea­son I had these in the car was to talk hands­free while dri­ving. Which was prob­a­bly only three times a year, but very use­ful when need­ed.
  • About $20 in change, which is more than I need for park­ing, but this was also the spon­ta­neous junk food fund.
  • My GPS charg­er, which was in case the bat­tery dies on the road (cause I hate dri­ving with it plugged in). I don’t keep my GPS in the car when it’s cold to pre­serve the bat­tery, and I haven’t need­ed it since the win­ter. I’m pret­ty sure you would have stolen my GPS if it was in there.
  • My iPhone charg­er, which was brand-spank­ing new, and used for long road trips.
  • My aux­il­liary audio cable, which I use to play my iPhone tracks over my car stereo. I was think­ing of replac­ing it any­way cause it was way too long and the bunched cable looked like clut­ter, but I was still annoyed by the fact that I had to dri­ve 10 min­utes to the near­est Circuit City to buy anoth­er with­out being able to lis­ten to the music I want­ed.

You did­n’t steal:

  • My wheel locks, which would have been no use to you with­out the key, and annoy­ing for me to replace. So…thanks?
  • My assort­ed music CDs, which I need­ed an excuse to clean up any­way, so you not tak­ing them did­n’t do my any favours. They were also real­ly good songs, and not steal­ing them prob­a­bly means your taste in music sucks.
  • My mod­el cat, which I keep in the back seat and has been get­ting mixed reviews late­ly. About 50% of peo­ple are fine with it, and 50% are real­ly creeped out because they think it’s real and refuse to sit in the back unless I put it in the trunk. But it was a present from my uncle in Hong Kong, so I’m real­ly glad you did­n’t take it.
  • My emer­gency blan­ket and can­dles, which I felt like you should have tak­en, because I can’t imag­ine you being very warm if you’re a pet­ty crook.

I have to won­der if you were so upset about not find­ing any­thing valu­able that you decid­ed to steal things that aren’t even worth sell­ing or fenc­ing, out of spite. It was­n’t enough to make a claim on my insur­ance, so I have to buy this stuff again. But I don’t real­ly need any of it, except for the aux­il­iary cable, which I replaced with a fan­cy new retract­ing set and with which I’m much hap­pi­er.

Just this week I was read­ing about that colonel being charged with a string of break-ins to steal under­wear, and how the peo­ple in that neigh­bour­hood felt shak­en at the news. I empathized with them, and felt lucky that it did­n’t hap­pen near me.

But when I came out of my house and found the con­tents of my glove com­part­ment spilled onto the pas­sen­ger seat, I was remind­ed that this is a fact of life every­one is forced to accept, because no one is immune. It’s a nec­es­sary evil, to remind peo­ple that putting too much val­ue in our pos­ses­sions means we only have more to lose.

The only thing that both­ers me is that I feel vio­lat­ed. I’m pret­ty sure I locked my car, but there’s no sign of forced entry, so I won­der how you got in and whether you now have free access. I can’t change my park­ing spot. My car will always be there, so now I need to keep any­thing valu­able out of it. Not that big a deal real­ly, but it’s less con­ve­nient to have to remem­ber to bring change any time I want to park down­town. Also, in the spring I like to keep all the win­dows of my house open, and now I won’t feel safe doing that when I’m sleep­ing on a dif­fer­ent floor.

But I still con­sid­er myself lucky. Lucky you did­n’t make out with more than $100 worth of stuff. Lucky my first expe­ri­ence with theft was rel­a­tive­ly minor, and an inex­pen­sive les­son learned. Lucky I’ve been feel­ing good late­ly and that this inci­dent is only a small blip on my radar.

I can only hope that you used the change to feed your­self, because if you’re steal­ing ran­dom shit from cars, you prob­a­bly need the mon­ey more than I do.

But, please, don’t do it again, cause to be hon­est, I’d rather it was me eat­ing those McDonald’s french fries on Friday night.

Letters to Girls Mothers

I’ve been try­ing to write a let­ter to her moth­er. Something like this:

I was going to stop by on my last trip to Toronto, but part of me real­ized it may have made things com­pli­cat­ed, since it’d be the first time since we stopped talk­ing to each oth­er. Not that I was scared you would take a side, but because I did­n’t want you to think I was forc­ing that deci­sion on you.

All I want to say is that I miss all of you ter­ri­bly, she was spe­cial, and it’s a pity things did­n’t work out. But it was much beyond our con­trol. I don’t know if either of us will ever grow out of these dif­fer­ences that hold us back.

The last time I came to vis­it, it was almost 2pm on a Tuesday and you were both at work. I scratched a note on the back of a notepad to let you know I stopped by, and she told me you liked me so much, you stuck it on your fridge. That always meant a lot.

Thanks for every­thing.

But all of it comes out sound­ing defen­sive. I wish I could explain how I’m not angry but sad, which is a tes­ta­ment to how great they were. I can’t fig­ure out how to put the ball in their court, to let them know that if they’re okay with it, and she’s okay with it, we can still be friends. I real­ly don’t know how appro­pri­ate that would be any­way.

Sometimes, the hard­est part of giv­ing up the girls is giv­ing up their par­ents too.

A Letter To The Officer Who Made Me Drive Into A Ditch

(If you haven’t seen the pic­ture.)

Maybe we have a few things in com­mon. We were both dri­ving back to the office at the end of the day (me to drop off the cas­es I had picked up, you to do more paper­work). Both five years at our jobs. Both with­out pri­or acci­dents. But I’m actu­al­ly in mar­ket­ing, not deliv­ery, and if it was­n’t for the fact that our so many of our dri­vers had called in sick, I would­n’t have been on the road at this par­tic­u­lar time on this par­tic­u­lar day.

It was actu­al­ly a few fac­tors that led to my dri­ving into the dirt shoul­der, and even­tu­al­ly, set­tling in a ditch fac­ing the wrong way in the grassy medi­an. You drove from the onramp direct­ly into the pass­ing lane — where I was — with­out check­ing your blind spot. Or sig­nal­ing. I did­n’t real­ize you were com­ing into my lane and about to hit me until it was too late. I did­n’t have time to brake, so I had to dri­ve half onto the shoul­der. As I steered back onto the cement road, it caused a dif­fer­ence in trac­tion between my left and right tires. It made me veer left, and I tried to cor­rect it by steer­ing right. Then the same thing hap­pened in the oppo­site direc­tion.

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