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As further charity, Children’s International suggests nine topics of conversation to touch upon in your letter to your sponsored child. They are: Gardening, Cooking, Music, Reading, Exercise, Sports, Travel, Movies, and Church. Coincidentally, these are my nine favorite conversational topics in the history of discourse. If I had a nickel for every time I chewed the fat raw on my hydrangea garden I would have zero nickels. Maybe, though, Wilson likes gardening, and, more so than other forms of writing, the epistolary form requires a greater deference to the wants of the audience, the audience here being Wilson, my sponsored child, who in my imagination now tends to a tiny but fertile tomato garden, a garden which he tends with a bent, rusted trowel, and when his tomatos come to blush red he presents the ripest tomato shyly to the plaited-haired girl in his class, before scuttling nervously back to his schooldesk. For whatever reason, I imagine his schooldesk as a squeaky schooldesk. I have no concept of what Wilson is interested in, be it gardening or interpretive dance, and, since I spend majority of my gabbing hours gabbing about things I know nothing about anyway, it seems unnecessary to discriminate.
Topic 1: Gardening
Dear Wilson,
I do not have a garden to garden, aside from the metaphorical garden of the self, which is a garden I garden as much as I garden the physical garden I do not have to garden. Or, that’s not entirely true. My apartment has a seven-foot-tall potted plant, but my roommates and I cannot tell if the plant is real or not. Or, that’s not entirely true. I think it’s real. Ryan, who lives closest to the potted plant, is convinced it is not. I water it every other day, after he goes to sleep. The plant does not grow, nor it does not die. It persists, despite what’s said about it, in its own way, leaning slightly towards the sun, suggesting life if not wholly inhabiting it. I admire the plant’s resiliency, be it alive or not. There are lives in inanimate things as much as there are lives in living things. By the way, do you have a tomato garden? Or a squeaky schooldesk?
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 2: Cooking
Dear Wilson,
I make a mean omelette and a mean nothing else. Many people are alarmingly passionate about food. I am not one of these people. Mostly, I eat so as to not die, and can go for literal days at a stretch without eating anything, and be quite fine with it! Do not do this, Wilson. Proper nutrition and consumption is important to a boy of your age, and, while I consider vegetarianism to be a moral imperative, I would never force my beliefs upon you. You are your own young man, potentially one who tends a tomato garden and has a squeaky schooldesk, and you should approach the world as you see fit. Is your schooldesk squeaky, if I can ask? I very vividly remember being prone sitting at squeaky schooldesks, and disregarding sizable portions of my early education wrestling with the desk, trying to find “The Sweet Seat,” the balancing point where the desk would cease squeaking, and I could learn, undeterred. I rarely found “The Sweet Seat.” Do you like food?
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 3: Music
Dear Wilson,
Never trust anyone who says that On Avery Island is better than Aeroplane.
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 4: Reading
Dear Wilson,
If was going to give you one piece of advice to sustain you the rest of your days, that advice would be that there is no sex in the champagne room. If I was going to give you one piece of advice atop that one, so I suppose two pieces of advice, that second piece of advice would be to read as much as possible, and you’ll be all the better for it. For a significant period of my life I did not read at all, and I have come to regard that time period as one profoundly wasted, though necessary in my development as a person who reckons reading so highly, a person far preferable than the one I would otherwise be. Do you like to read?
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 5: Exercise
Dear Wilson,
This may seem preposterous, but, in The United States, many boys and girls your age barely exercise at all. They are too busy updating their iPhones. An iPhone is a pocket-sized television that obliterates your soul and ruins the dates I bring girls on, but I digress, and should say that I value exercise, being a proponent of feeling good physically, as well as mentally, and knowing that these concepts are inextricably linked. So, get as much exercise as possible. Go, swim in the shallow, monitored portions of your respective river! Go, play a game of stickball and be reverent of The Ghost Runner! Are you familiar with The Ghost Runner?
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 6: Sports
Dear Wilson,
Go Knicks.
Love,
CarCar
Topic 7: Travel
Dear Wilson,
“Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home, I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 8: Movies
Dear Wilson,
I have seen far too many movies, and am glad of it. On more than one occasion have I stared up at the confusion of shadows on my nighttime bedroom ceiling and thought, “Can I marry a girl who has never seen Star Wars?” I believe that taste is reflective of character, and those who lack taste, while definitively not worthless, may be worth less. People’s passions vary, but the passion with which a person approaches their true interests, whether they be tomato gardening, or reading, or squeaky schooldesk righting, should not. A person’s passion should be infectious, or, at least, a spike to the accompanier’s curiosity. Be wary of people who lack passion. Be warier of people who don’t know what planet Mos Eisely is on, what planet Jawas originate from, where Han drew first on Greedo. Know that these all refer to the same planet.
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 9: Church
Dear Wilson,
I am an atheist. I don’t want to believe in a God who would make your schooldesk squeaky, your tomato garden less than fruitful (ha!). I want to believe in people, and their ability to do the things that the God so many of them believe in obviously cannot. What’s your favorite Bible verse? Mine’s Matthew 8:28. Do see.
Sincerely,
CarCar
Topic 10: Upon Reflection
Dear CarCar,
You can’t send any of this to Wilson, you crazy person. Try again tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Reason
Topic 11: The Rebuttal
Dear Reason,
Okay.
Sincerely,
CarCar
baby pictures of famous dictators 