Saturday, December 13, 2008

Brag Letters

If you know me well, you know one of my MANY pet peeves is "brag letters" people send out at Christmas. I don't mind the form letter- to INFORM, but there is a fine line between informing and bragging. Let me illustrate the difference: (This is actually one I received, all names have been changed). "Marcy is in the sixth grade this year. She is the star of her class. She is doing ninth grade reading and captain of her volleyball team. She was the highest scorer for her team, if not in the city.
Next is Elliot. Another PERFECT child! He is four-years-old now and he is such an angel, I find myself looking under his shirt for wings. He is reading already, his Montessori teacher at our private school says he is gifted."
GAG ME!!! Actually this writer does have nice kids (well at the time, now they are a pain in the a$$). But again- fine line....
This is how it SHOULD have been written. "Marcy is in sixth grade. She enjoys volleyball and reading. Lucky for her she is good at both being she spends so much time doing them!
Elliot started pre-school at Academy Montessori school (for the weird)- sorry- I HAD to say it. He is four-years-old already! Four is my favorite age. He has been entertaining us with his early childhood antics!
See wasn't that much easier to take? I have to admit, I have not sent out cards yet. Mostly because I've only received three and I wonder if it's worth the effort. Partly because I can't get a good picture of Noah and Ethan let alone three dogs. I thought of sending a form letter (I know- gasp). However, to prove my point I'd send an ANTI-BRAG letter. It would go like this:
Dear Friends and Family,
It is Christmas again, and as cold as shit outside. I really prefer summer, and not just because I don't work in the summer. Too bad baby Jesus wasn't born in June- I'd have a lot of free time to celebrate properly. Well, here's the summery of our year. Scott still works a the same place. Not much has changed there. He's in charge of more stores. However, not the Hawaii one like I wanted him to be- hey free trip. Noah is in third grade- so yes I deal with third graders ALL day. He just got glasses, hope he's not going to be blind as a bat like his mother. He likes school and is obsessed with sports. He is in soccer, basketball, football and baseball. I wore out my chair dragging it to games. Ethan had a tough time adjusting to Kindergarten- more specifically his teacher. Apparently he thinks he is a clown- which would suck because we all know clowns are creepy. He's gotten better now, but it really is just a matter of time before he stops obeying someone else's rules. Abby our King Charles Spaniel had a traumatic year. We brought home a King Charles/Bichon mix in early January. Abby was lonely, but I think she misses her lonely days. Max takes up a lot of her mama's attention. Both times we got Max and Abby we picked them up from West Achers. We got a six week old puppy right before Thanksgiving from the liquor store. We found out broken dogs come from the liquor store. He is wild. My house has a perma-smell of dog pee. He had spaghetti coming out of his bum a few weeks ago- turned out it was worms, so all the dogs have been de-wormed. I am waiting for the day Noah or Ethan tell me they pooed spaghetti. I moved schools AGAIN- seriously- I am starting to take all of this moving personally. Maybe the district is trying to tell me something. My class consists of 18 out of 24 kids with learning/behavior issues. Mostly behavior. Of the six non- issue kids, four are "gifted" i.e.- don't listen, argue with me and are socially stunted. Have a good Christmas. My cookies are burning.
See, isn't an anti-brag letter much more fun?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They do that to cover you there bad pesonal relationship. your luck you have a great husand and kids

Julie said...

Your letter made me laugh. The honest ones are so much more entertaining.