Dear Wayne,

You and Courtney have a date! That's wonderful! Did you already go out? Was it to a nice restaurant? Now be honest, did she have to twist your arm or did you voluntarily ask her out? Sallah wants to know if you'll wear the new nice clothing, and also said if you dare go out on the town in your regular army fatigues she'll be very disappointed in you. It sounds like the two of you did have a lot of time to talk, even if you did a lot of squabbling as well. I would hope that you wouldn't beat Courtney. Abusive relationships are nothing to joke about, Wayne. Courtney shouldn't be trying to hit you either, except while training of course.

What mugger are you talking about? Is that how you ended up with stitches? Sometimes I really think you say things just to get me worked up. What happened? Is Courtney okay? Did the mugger hurt you and that's how you got stitches in your elbow? Are you okay?

Seth is behaving and honestly he's even milking his injury a bit for sympathy. The young ladies in the karate classes do a lot of fussing over him, which he encourages. Sallah came to help with the deskwork, and Dan has helped with any physically demanding cleaning or moving things around, after he gets off work. It's wonderful the way everyone pulls together. All of them have given poor Seth heck too. Since he was show-boating when he got hurt, the only sympathy he does get is from some of the girls.

Oh you would love dinner here! I've been getting fresh greens, string beans, squash, potatoes, turnips and corn. There's nothing like an ear of corn when you pick it, shuck it and drop it right into boiling water! Once it's sitting around in a grocery store all the natural sugars start turning into starch. It's just not the same!

Well, if Courtney really liked the radiator, then I guess it's a good present. Yes, you should get her presents for no reason too. That's something girls like. Maybe she would like a plant instead of flowers? You are correct about listening. That's very important, and if you don't understand her, you can ask her, you know that. And I think that it's fine that you didn't tell her why you were upset, I'm sure that would have led to another fight. It's like a polite dissembling.. not really a lie. When you say something polite instead of what might be the truth but would be rude or hurtful to the person? That's okay, especially to your girlfriend. Like I told you before, relationships are hard, if they were easy they wouldn't be so desirable!

I hope that Flint doesn't interfere with your night off. Try to stay out of trouble, so they won't have any excuse to deny you that night off. I'll try to send you another care package soon! Much love.

Beth

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Dear Aunt Beth,

Yes, a real date and to a nice restaurant. We're going at the end of the week. Yes, I will wear some of the nice civilian clothes. Yes, I asked her out. Asking a woman out on a date isn't exactly rocket science. Even a knuckle-dragger like me can manage to do it.

We did a lot of talking for sure. I don't think we have a abusive relationship at all. Not unless you consider Snakes and Shana to have a abusive relationship too. It's not like we ever scare each other or leave marks on each other. I figure it's more along the lines of how those brother's of Shana's beat on each other just playing around. Does that make sense? We don't want to hurt each other, but we're pretty physical. She likes to touch and hug a lot more than I'm comfortable with, but I'm learning to deal with it. It's not that I don't enjoy getting hugged by her, I just ain't used to it. I still jump if I don't see it coming. I'll get used to it eventually. Got any tips for getting used to a girl hugging you?

The mugger didn't hurt either of us. I busted my elbow on the pavement, no big deal. Just took about 4 stitches to close it, although I don't think they really needed to put any stitches in. Overreacting again. The mugger was going after Courtney, but well.. it didn't go all that well for him. We left him tied up for the local police to take care of. Duke wasn't all that happy about the reports he got over it. Courtney and I had to stand in his office and get yelled at about proper procedures. Duke can be a bit tiresome at times. I offered to get him some aspirin and he put me on KP duty for a night. I just washed dishes and peeled some potatoes and stuff.

The messhall gives us pretty good chow, but I sure wish we had stuff like you tell me about. I'm fond of good food even if I will eat just about anything. Roadblock gave me another recipe for some sort of coconut soup. I don't know that I ever ate coconut soup, but he says it's good stuff and to send it to you.

I'm glad that everyone is pulling together to make up for Seth being out. I know the boys probably are running ragged with a missing teacher. We have more trainers than we need, but only because people get sent out all the tiime, so we have to be able to fill in without any fuss. If Seth gets too uppity, you can remind him that everyone has to take up his slack because he was being dumb trying to show off.

Tell Paddy that revolver arrived, it's a piece of junk. Ask him if he wants the pieces back or if I should chuck it into the scrap metal pile? The barrel is rusted so bad the rifling is shot, the cylinder doesn't set correctly in the frame and won't spin, and the stop is cracked anyway, so it'll snap the first time you tried to fire it.. if it was fireable in the first place. It's just all around a piece of junk. The grip even has a crack that makes it unstable so it doesn't really have one good part in the whole thing. The hammer is jammed because I think the frame is warped, I didn't honestly get into it any further, since I found so many things wrong, I just quit looking at it. If he wants it back, I can ship it back to him, but I want him to know that it will never be safe to fire a round through. He can just let me know what he wants done with it.

I'll have to think about getting Courtney a plant. Maybe she'd like a cactus, it's prickly like she is, and doesn't take a lot of taking care of, like her. Since she don't like flowers, and a cactus can't be called a flower, maybe she'd like that. I'm glad I didn't screw up by letting her think I was unhappy over her being upset. Maybe I'm starting to get the hang of this dating stuff after all.

Sorry this is got to get cut off now, I have to go find out why the greenshirts are headed upstairs in a big group when they should be sleeping. They're probably up to no good and I like to catch them before they actually damage things.

Best wishes,

Wayne