My school is nice.  It was pizza day today.  It is snowing. I have learned how to do some pretty hard work at my school.  Please write back soon and tell me about your home.

I am glad to hear that Montessori school is nice and that last Monday was pizza day. You will very much like it when you are all grown up because then, if you want, every day can be pizza day. Grownups get to do pretty much whatever they want to do. This accounts for many bad fashion choices.

You speak of the recent "pretty hard work" that you’ve been doing. I am worried that your school may be violating child labor laws. When your mother and I were growing up, back before there was protective legislation, we had to clean motel rooms after school and weekends. Grandma called it "vo tech." Does Montessori have anything like that?

You asked about my home. I have enclosed a picture. In this picture I am putting new tile in the bathroom.

The picture is from two years ago. Since then I have done a lot of hard work. But none of it on my home. However, any month now I plan to complete the bathroom by doing the grout work and putting in a towel rack. Once that is finished I can reassemble the toilet.

My condominium is on a very busy street, so at night I can hear the cars and buses going by. Sometimes they honk and I think that is very rude at 3:00 in the morning. One good thing is I get to walk to work, because my office is only a few blocks away. On the way to work I run into all the interesting people who live in Washington’s many parks and squares. Sometimes the new ones, the ones that haven’t met me before, ask me for money for a cup of coffee. Instead, I offer them a book called "the Watchtower." And they never ask me for money again. Tomorrow I am going to take my book into work with me, and when my boss asks me for something I’m going to offer her the book instead. I will let you know how that goes.

One of the little parks near my house is called the "Sonny Bono Memorial Park." You are too young to remember, but Sonny Bono was a great American statesman. That is why they had to name a park after him in Washington. It is a very small park (about 8 feet by 12 feet). It is surrounded by a wrought iron (some would say overwrought iron) fence and filled with decorative cabbage plants. These can be quite tasty if boiled and served with lots of butter and salt.

So how is everyone at home? You must write back and tell me about everything that, in later years, you will consider traumatic and emotionally scarring. It’s a good idea to commit this stuff to paper now, while its fresh on your mind. Otherwise when you are an adult, you will have to go for repressed memory therapy, just like me. Did I tell you your mother once hit me with a baseball bat?

                                              Love,

                                              Your Uncle Dennis