letters from beyond

yesterday, i received an e mail from larry weingard, an old high school buddy i hadn't heard from in forty years. it seems, that he had saved all the letters i had written him during my freshman year of college and was now threatening to release them to the media. since i am neither famous, nor running for public office, i was puzzled as to his motive but larry was always a little wonky, so i played along. i convinced him to send me copies of the said correspondence before he forwarded them on to katie couric. it had been an awfully long time and i was curious to see who 18 year old judi was back then.

i was shocked. unlike hillary, whose college letters disclose that she was already agonizing over which political party to support and what ways she could change the world, 18 year old judi had very different concerns. in my first letter to larry, it seems i devoted two lengthy paragraphs to the difficulty of breaking in a new pair of weejun loafers. i was debating offering my cash strapped room-mate a dollar a day to wear my shoes for a week and do the dirty work.

in other letters, i went on to discuss the ethics of moving my circle pin from the left side of my villager blouse's peter pan collar to the right. in doing so i would be implying that i might not actually be a virgin. this move could possibly insure a more active social life. i also spent a great deal of ink on the fact that i had kissed a date good-night on the first date - dooming me to never seeing him again. the fact that i ended up marrying that young man just shows how flawed 18 year old judgement can be.

reading further on in the stack of letters i did discover that i was not a total air head. politics did come up once during a heated tirade in which, while i did admit that president kennedy was good looking, he could no way hold a candle to paul - the cute beatle. i also found, in one letter dated just a mere three months after starting school, that i was out on a picket line. today, the cause seems embarrassing but back then, extending dorm curfew from 10 p.m. weeknights to 10:30, seemd like a big deal.

people are saying that we shouldn't read too much into the letters of hillary clinton. after all, she was just a teenager when she wrote them. what can they possibly tell us? well, having read excerpts of hers and excerpts of mine i can only say one thing. she is running for the office of president of the united states and i am not. enough said.