Our wedding readings and homily pointed toward the future. The wedding celebration, however, was largely concerned with the past. Friends and family alike spent their time marvelling that I, who was such a precocious and irritating little child, actually grew up enough to get married and sharing stories of my youth. Not least among these memories was a letter I had written when I was in the third grade–it was returned to me by a friend who journeyed from the Great North to attend the wedding. I reduplicate the letter in full, with commentary in italics.
Dear Ryan,
How are you I’m fine. (sic)
The first thing you’ll notice is the absence of punctuation at the end of the first ‘sentence’. I used to rail against how bad students write these days. No more.
We are lerning cursive here. (sic) Obviously, I demonstrated proficiency at spelling as well.
The work is too easy. Or maybe I didn’t spend any time actually learning to write.
There are some good kids out of the 900 some in the elementry were I go to. (Sic) (The ‘sic’ is getting redundant). As you can tell, my inherent optimism shines forth.
I don’t blame it. Ever the charitable one was I.
It’s the second largest in the state. Obviously not sophisticated enough to understand the canons of logic, I failed to realize that the size of the school doesn’t justify the lack of
‘good kids’ in it. A simple ‘correlation=causation’ error.
The Elma football team is doing bad. They’ve lost every game they played. Bad seems to be a bit of an understatement.
I’m taking piano lessons. Obviously I lacked the natural rhythm for writing I have now. The changes in topic are so abrupt I can hardly keep up. Or maybe I was simply thinking too fast for what was inexorably slow cursive handwriting.
My teachers nice. Sometime were going to have a paino pizza party. Sic. Sick. My spelling is awful.
We have a realy nice house here in Elma. Whether or not such a thing is possible….
We live in small town. Tarzan like Jane. Live with Jane in tree….with a name like “Elma,” you know it had to be small.
I’ve starteded to like Hardy Boys mystiery’s. (sic) Who hadn’t by this age?
Well By
Your friend,
Matt An abrupt ending. I never was good at ‘goodbyes.’
Matthew Lee Anderson
Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.
