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L E T T E R S .
[Please send printable correspondence to mcsweeneysmail@yahoo.com. Thank you.] - - - - Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 From: Dan Kennedy Subject: Hand Gun Rules and Regulations Dear McSweeney's, I'm living in Brooklyn now. Right between the yuppie couples who renovate the brownstones and the older working class Italian people who have been living in Brooklyn way before it was trendy to do so. I don't feel like I fit in with either group here, really. The yuppies ask me what I'm "going to do with the building" and I always resist telling the truth which is, "continue to rent the top floor of it until I move again." This morning I was walking to the subway when an obese drunk man on the corner pointed his hand toward me with his thumb up and index finger extended. He took aim and then made a "bang" sound with his mouth. I didn't really know what protocol would be with something like that since we're both adults, so I just waved. It didn't feel right. I'm thinking now that maybe I should have hit the ground and counted to ten. The rule is ten if you're dead, right? Ten or fifteen? Whatever. I have an invisible shield so it doesn't matter, Dan Kennedy Brooklyn, New York - - - - Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 From: Dan Kennedy Subject: This guy just makes good sense Dear McSweeney's There's a new candidate running for President of the United States. He was on the subway last night. He got on the F train, locked his mountain bike to the center post inside, lined up his half smoked cigarettes to kind of see how many he had the way presidents will do sometimes, and then started telling us about some of the things he's going to do. The big item on his platform is a new kind of bomb that he would have our armed services drop on countries when necessary. It only puts people to sleep. That way problems can be solved while they're asleep or groggy and more cooperative. I'm not entirely sure how it works, because like all of these slick talking politicians, every time I tried to get some details on these big campaign promises, he would start talking about something else. When I asked him exactly what we would do with all of the sleepy people, he started talking about secret societies in Hollywood, a reserve of cocaine and LSD that the President has access to at all times, McDonald's (the fast food restaurant) and how it is responsible for most of the wars we fight (I know. I never knew this one either), and radio waves that we can all receive if we demand the right to monitor them. Smooooooth, Dan Kennedy Brooklyn, New York - - - - [NOTE: The following is an exchange between a McSweeney’s reader and the Web Site Editor about the nature of fun, specifically the childhood sort. Like many fine things in life, they have difficulty describing it but know when they’re having it.] Dear McSweeney's, When we were little, my brother Raymon dug holes in the yards where we lived or played. One time, at the babysitter's house, he dug a hole so deep that he fell asleep inside it, and everyone looked for him for hours. He was six. Now he's thirty-seven, and whenever he buys a house, the first thing he does is dig a small pond. He also taps his foot at the dinner table. Amy Dalrymple - - - - Amy, My father dug a hole in the backyard once. He was planting a big tree. Of course, I had to climb down inside to see what was what. When I tried to get out, I found I couldn't. The hole was too deep. It took my father a couple of hours to find me. I think he was inside the house having lunch or something. When I tell this story — and I have told it a few times since — people always ask me, Did you call out for help? Did you yell? The answer to both of those questions is no, I did not. I just stared at the dirt in front of me and waited. I knew eventually someone would find me. I was, I'm going to guess, nine- or ten-years-old. Web Site Editor - - - - Web Site Editor, Is that story famous in your family? It ought to be. My mom forgot me and my brother at the roller-rink once. Sounds sad, but it was funny. The manager was locking up and we were standing outside with our skates. I was a pretty good skater. I had big pom-poms on my skates and could do what we called "The Can Opener." Do you know this move? Anyway, the manager came out and asked what we were doing, we told him we were waiting for our mom, so he had us go inside and call her. She had been working a lot and when she finally answered and said, "Hello" in this really sleepy voice, I knew she had forgotten. So I said, "Mom?" and she goes "Oh my god!" and hung up and came and got us. We love telling that story at family gatherings. Amy - - - - Dear Amy, I don't think he hole story is very famous in my family. I'm actually pretty certain I'm the only one who thinks about it anymore. But that's true of a lot of things. Anyway, what move was The Can Opener again? I can remember Shoot the Duck, I think it was called, where you got down with one skate underneath you and one leg shot out forward with your toe pointed up and the back wheels on the ground and you propelled yourself forward by pushing off the ground with your hands. You skate backwards, too? WSE - - - - WSE, The Can Opener and Shoot the Duck seem to be the same thing. Only I never pushed off with my hands. We would skate and then assume the position. I can skate backwards, but they don't let you do that at roller rinks anymore. Someone killed someone that way I guess. Hard to believe. Sounds suspiciously like an urban legend. Every time I hear the story, it's someone's cousin's friend's dad who killed his own kid or something that way. Do you skate backwards? Oh, what about The Dogsled? That's where you get six skaters in a row and hang onto each other's waists and crouch down and go as fast as you can. I was the youngest, so I had to be in front. It was scary! We would go pretty fast, and always crashed. Amy - - - - Dear Amy, Where do you live that Shoot the Duck is called the Can Opener? Shoot the Duck was Shoot the Duck in Louisiana, which probably explains everything right there. The license plate motto for Louisiana used to be Sportsmen's Paradise, though I think that's changed now to something more innocuous, like Friendly State Next to Texas Where You Can Play Various Games of Chance. In Louisiana there were definitely people who did that dogsled maneuver, but I never knew what it was called. I'm going to guess that it wasn't called the dogsled, there being no dogsleds anywhere in sight. The pushing off with your hands part is probably something only I did, because I never had enough speed going. Talk to you soon. WSE - - - - WSE In Ohio, we called Shoot the Duck the Can Opener. I think it comes from the dive called the can opener. That's where you jump off the diving board and grab one leg and hold it to you chest with that foot pointing down. All of this roller skating talk has reminded me of the time I fell on a skate. This is the most painful thing I can imagine. My brother Damon was a really great roller skater. He could do jumps and everything. Although, he did break his nose diving once. Amy - - - - Dear Amy, I'll tell you what all this skating talk reminds me of, this time when I went skating and came home and the next night, at around dinner-time, this girl called the house, and said, Hello, is Paul there? and I said, This is he, and she said, I saw you skating yesterday at the such-and-such. I was there with my friend, and her explanation went on for a while and it seemed like even though I had no idea who she was and she had no idea who I was that maybe our families went to the same church or something, and I said, Oh, okay, and she said, What are you doing? and I said, You mean right now? and she said, Yeah, right now? and laughed, as if what she had said could mean anything else, and I said, I don't know, nothing really, and she asked me, Do you want to go skating some time? Now this next part is just the best, because this is just me and my nervousness and general social ineptitude right here, right in a little nutshell, and I said, Uh, look, we're eating dinner right now, I've got to go eat. We're having ham. Then I hung up. Talk to you soon. Paul - - - - Paul, Your story reminds me of this kid, Brian Rogers. When I was ten or so, I had a huge crush on him. I wrote about him in my diary and all of that. He was my brother's best friend. (Damon, not Raymon.) So we were playing this game called flying turds. I will explain the game next. Anyway, Damon goes, "Hey Brian, Amy has a crush on you! Do you like her?" Brian was from Kentucky and he had this really strong accent, and he goes, "Not really." Whenever I tell this story, it makes me laugh out loud. I was so horribly mortified! Damon laughed hysterically. Flying turds was a game we would play in town. We lived in the country and Brian's family lived in town. So we would stand at the top of Mulberry Street. It was a big hill. When you saw a car turning up the street, you had to yell, "Flying turd!" and run down the sidewalk. You had to hide behind the bushes in front of Brian's house before the car had passed you. Amy - - - - Dear Amy, I am sitting here trying to figure out where the fun would be in playing flying turds. Help me out, because maybe I'm being obtuse. I'm sometimes obtuse. When you yelled out "flying turd" were you calling the driver of the car a flying turd, or were you identifying yourselves as flying turds? Because, you know, there's something about saying that and then running madly down the hill that makes me think you were the only ones around doing any flying. I think sometimes it is next to impossible to understand what all seems fun at any given time. My grandmother on my mother's side loves telling me and my brother about how she liked playing two games when she was growing up. One game involved getting together with a bunch of her friends, taking bushel baskets and filling them up with whole walnuts. Then one friend would get to sit on the ground while the other friends upended all the bushel baskets on the lucky friend's head. These were whole walnuts, Amy. My grandmother said that was a lot of fun. The only thing she recalled being more fun was sitting on the curb with her legs stuck out while neighborhood boys rode their bicycles over her legs. You ever hear what happened to Brian from Kentucky? Like where he is now? Bye, Paul - - - - Paul, Brian's family and my family are friends, so I hear about what he is up to quite often. He lives in my town, but we never see each other. About flying turds, well I'm not sure about who is the flying turd. If I thought about it, I suppose it would be the car. But I think this speaks to your point about what fun is. I never thought about the definition of the "flying turd" until you brought it up. I think yelling "Flying Turd!" was fun in itself. Try it! Did your grandmother ever say if it hurt? Because sometimes you are having fun and it hurts and you don't care. Like skateboarding. You fall down, it hurts, you don't care. It's almost better, because you have a great bruise or something. Amy - - - - Read Previous Letters:
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