Writers Forum Find Your Muse #10 - Holiday Disaster

For this week's Writers Forum I am again attempting to hone my skills at writing fiction:

 

Saturday, December 16, 1972

Dear Carole,

          I have so much to tell you!  Every day I ask God why you had to move away just when school is getting good.  We aren’t the shrimpy little 7^th graders any more.  Yay!   The boys at school are so dumb but I met a freshman from the high school yesterday and he is so cool.  I hope he asks me out.  Of course, Mom and Dad probably won’t let me go out until I’m 20 years old or something.  I don’t care.  He is soooo dreamy, and his name is Nate, and I am sure that some day I will marry him.

          Oh!  I suppose you want to know how I met Nate?  Well, Mr. Harquin, my English teacher, asked me to take a note over to the high school office yesterday morning.  I had to wait for Mrs. Shoreby to get off the phone when I got there.  This very cute boy was waiting right in front of me, and he smiled at me, and he even talked to me.  I am just in heaven ever since.  I hope he sees me again and asks me for my phone number.

          Last night we had to go to Rita’s dumb wedding.  I didn’t tell you she was getting married, did I?  Ha ha.  I know I didn’t tell you because nobody in the family even knew about it until Monday!  How dumb is that?  Rita just met this guy, and he is really strange, if you know what I mean.

          Rita still thinks her name is Gracie.  Rita used to be so cool when she first went to MSU, but ever since she thinks she found Jesus or something, she is like a zombie from the Twilight Zone.  Remember when my mom and grandma took us to Lansing last spring to see Rita?  She was still Rita then, but she was already talking kind of weird, don’t you think?

          If you wouldn’t have moved away in August, you would be able to see what I mean.  I didn’t get any letters from her for a long time.  Maybe I did, but Mom and Dad hid them.  They say Rita is “subversive.”  Isn’t that romantic?

          Well anyway, she came home all of a sudden in September, but then she’s no sooner home and Mom tells her she had better go stay with Grandma so she won’t be a bad influence on little Judy.  Mom heard Rita telling Judy some of her strange “end of the world” ideas, is why she sent her to Grandma’s house.

          Oh!  Speaking of Mom, she is calling me to set the table for supper, so I will be right back.

          Well, I’m back.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, Rita/Grace.  They made her pick a new name in that group she lived with.  Mom made us watch a show on channel 8 about cults so we would understand.  Rita’s biggest worry from what I could tell was that America was going to end on Election Day.  Rita was staying with Grandma, and she could have voted for the first time this year, but she didn’t even vote.  She was too worried about the end of the world.

          When the world didn’t end, she went and found a new group of people in downtown G.R. to live with.  She likes communes, I guess.  Maybe that’s romantic too.  I don’t know.

          Anyway, she moved there just before Thanksgiving, and she handed out food to poor people on Thanksgiving and didn’t even come to Grandma’s house.  I think Grandma told her not to come, because my mom gets so irate every time she sees Rita.

          Well last Monday out of the blue Rita calls home from her new church place, and she wants to come over, and we missed Glen Campbell on TV to meet this guy God told her to marry.  I think he was a hippy out in California before he found Jesus.  I think he still smokes loco weed.  He has creepy eyes.  He looks like he is lost in space, if you ask me.

          Well, they got married last night, and it was a weird wedding, and now they are off on a honeymoon in a car somebody loaned them.

          So that brings you up to date on life here in Wyoming.  J.V. basketball starts in a few more weeks, and I think I will go to all the games just in case Nate is on the team.

          Don’t forget to play Daydream Believer every night before you go to bed, and remember me.  I am pining away for next summer when I can come and see you or you can come and see me.

          Rita and her new husband will be home from the honeymoon in time to come here for Christmas, and that is going to be a disaster – I just know it.

          Write me back as soon as you get this.  Maybe I will send you a picture of Rita and the creep, as soon as Dad develops the film.  Ta ta for now!

Love,

 Sherri