Dear Mother and Dad:
It has now been three months since I left for college. I have been
remiss in writing and am very sorry for my thoughtlessness in not
having written before. I will bring you up to date now, but before
you read on, please sit down. You are not to read any further
unless you are sitting down... Okay?
Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture
and the concussion I got when I jumped out of the window of my
dormitory when it caught fire shortly after my arrival, are pretty
well healed now. I only spent two weeks in the hospital and now I
can see almost normally and only get three headaches a day.
Fortunately the fire in the dormitory and my jump were witnessed by
an attendant at the gas station near the dorm and he was the one
who called the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited
me at the hospital, and since I had nowhere to live because of the
burnt-out dorm, he was kind enough to invite me to share his
apartment with him. It's really a basement room, but it is kind of
cute. He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply in love and
are planning to get married. We haven't set the exact date yet, but
it will be before my pregnancy begins to show
Yes, Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking
forward to being grandparents and I know you will welcome the baby
and give it the same love and devotion and tender care you gave me
when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is
that my boyfriend has some minor infection which prevents us from
passing our premarital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from
him. This will soon clear up with the penicillin injections I am
now taking daily.
I know you will welcome him into our family with open arms. He is
kind and although not well educated, he is ambtious. Although he is
of a different race and religion than ours, I know you expressed
tolerence will not permit you to be bothered by the fact that his
skin color is somewhat darker than ours. I am sure you will love
him as I do. His family background is good, too for I am told that
his father is an important gunbearer in the village in Africa from
which he comes.
Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that
there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or skull
fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not
engaged, I do not have syphillis and there is no boyfriend in my
life. However, I am getting a "D" in History and an "F" in Science,
and I wanted you to see these marks in the proper perspective.
