I Must Be Doing Something Right

[Oh. My. GOD. Not "OMG," not any of the probably-healthier-but-less-effective-for-their-newness substitutes, I think this one deserved the full blasphemy.]

[OK, having finally had it with George Will's historically myopic pronouncements, I dashed off a short note to the Chronicle last week. Mirabile visu, they actually printed the damn thing. I clipped a couple of copies, bragged to those I thought would be interested, and forgot it.]

[Wednesday, John, who generally collects our mail from the boxes in the lobby, called me and told me I had a letter. He noted it was postmarked Sacramento, but had no return address. "Maybe it's from your friend Aaron," he suggested. Hmm, we don't communicate much via snail mail, but cool. We don't know anybody else in the Capital.]

[What with one thing and another - seeing Grease at the Orpheum with John and the parents, dinner and pictures from Kate and Mike's trip to Africa afterwards at Pauline's Pizza (around the corner from my first SF apartment), getting John on a plane to Rochester for a long weekend visit, and school yesterday - I didn't get around to spotting and opening the letter until last night.]

[Yup, postmarked Sacto. Nope, no return address. Contents: a clipping of my letter to the Chron, rubberstamped "Pure 100% Bullshit," and an unsigned note written in block caps, which reads: "Huntington, old boy, you have got shit for brains. Get your stupid head out of your ass! (What kind of dumbass name is "Huntington"??)"]

[Whoa. I mean, whoa! I actually got hate mail! Eliminating immediately the possibility that Aaron did it as a joke (not his sense of humor, and he's had other things on his mind), I mulled: OK, someone read the letter, which gave my name and home city. (The Chron, like most American papers, doesn't give street addresses.) My correspondent must have gone into the phone book or called 411, as the directory currently carries my street address, but not my apartment number. (Right, apartment number wasn't on the envelope.) He (I'm almost certain it was a he) went to all this trouble, and didn't sign his name.]

[(It suddenly occurred to me that if my correspondent had the "resourcefulness" to find my address, he certainly could do a Google search and find this site. This isn't the first time I've questioned the wisdom of using my first name as the title of this journal.)]

[Part of me didn't even want to write about this, following the old Usenet dictum that it's always a bad idea to feed the energy beast. Most of me thinks it's hilarious and even a little ego-boostingly cool. And a small part of me is scared. George Will probably gets dozens of these a week (at least, I hope he does), but it's my first.]

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