Correspondence June 26, 1987 (letter - part 1)

I sometimes wrote to my pen pals from my office. This was back in the days when PCs were not common and I had to use a typewriter. When I look back at such letters, I cringe at the typing mistakes and skipped words, but such was the risk when you could not go back and change something here or there in a message. My writing has, hopefully, gotten a bit better over the years, but I was still a fairly good writer for my age (22) at the time.

Though I taped to T, I chose to write on occasion because I couldn't easily tape to him from work. This allowed me to be in touch with him any time he was on my mind. By the time this letter was written, I was spending no small amount of time thinking about him.

Note: If you click on the pictures, a larger version will load that should be at a readable size.

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Transcription:

Dear T,

Since you have never been graced with the undeniable wit of my written word, and because I have an incredible urge to communicate with someone intelligent, I am typing to you live from my place of employment. How's that for a long sentence?

I'm not sincerely bored... merely tired and unable to go to sleep. You see (or "ya see", as Bill Cosby says), it's only 8:15 and all of the natives are quietly restless, but not the least bit tired. I had a substantial amount of insomnia last night so I'm already beat and I know these lovely individuals are going to keep me up until 1:00 a.m. (which is their Friday night curfew).

Let me attempt to entertain you with my musings of the evening. This is a day that began with a makeup kit that cost $8.40. We (the illustrious staff here at T.L.) put on of the clients on a true behavior modification program (that means there was a specific target behavior, a monitoring mechanism, and a tangible reward). We wanted to see if behaviorism was as lovely in practice as in theory. The subject was a 42-year-old white female with the I.Q. of a throat lozenge. To give you some idea of how this woman functions, I'll give you a brief case history. 

Norma flunked 1st grade 6 times. At that point, her family and the American educational system called it a day and let her stay at home with Mommy for the rest of her mother's days. When tested for functional level, Norma hit the 6th month of 1st grade as her level. When Norma entered our program, she drew her eyebrows on with a blue liner pencil, wore more base make-up than all 4 KISS members combined, took speed (aka diet pills), ate prunes to help her "lose weight", and would not drink water because it would make her gain weight. If the crystal beauty of Behaviorism's principles can work on her, they can work on almost anyone who comes into the program.

The target behavior was taking medications without reminder. She takes an antipsychotic drug called Trilafon. It is meant to help organize her thoughts. She needs a low dosage because there isn't a Hell of a lot to be organized. Anyway, the monitoring mechanism was a calendar that we put stickers on when she took the medication each day without reminder. By the way, she chose her own reward from a list that included a wallet, dinner with a staff member, a makeup kit, and going to a movie with a staff person. We were quite flattered that she picked makeup over us.

The pristine qualities of Behaviorism worked like a charm for Norma. She is now happily taking her medicine and can go back to painting on her eyebrows in a wide assortment of colors. Actually, I broke her of the blue brows... they're now brown. The one thing I can't seem to break her of is completely shaving her entire face (!).

I wonder what you would have thought about me had we written before we had taped. I am much more fond of writing to people than talking to them for the most part and feel that it is a better form of communication for me. When I'm sharp at it, I'm pretty good. However, I'm not nearly at sarcastic wit as I used to be because of disuse. I had a pen pal in Canada named Clifford to whom I used to compose 10-page novellas rife with cynicism, sarcasm, and innuendo of the rudest sort. He was equally good at returning such types of letters. For reasons unknown to me, he quit writing to me entirely around August of last year. This was after I had sent the dear boy an "Asylum"* promo poster for his birthday. I never even received an acknowledgment that it reached his P.O. box, despite a few attempts on my part to re-open communication after his silence. It also happened after I sent him a picture of my (newer) self. Talk about a blow to the ego... I think I was angrier at the lack of acknowledgement of the gift.

Oddly enough, Clifford was one of the few male pen pals I had ever come to admire enough to even consider some sort of long distance relationship with. He wasn't educated, but he was bright. In fact, he worked in a butcher shop and liked to splatter fake blood on the walls of his house and spray fake cobwebs around his Gene Simmons pictures. Maybe he never wrote back because he ended up getting committed... one can only ponder.

Another thing Dear Clifford (capital "D" intended) had over...

*****

*Asylum was an album made by KISS in 1985.

The second part of this letter is posted here.