Disclaimer: Violets are blue
Roses are best
I don't own the rights
To DPS
The Cloudy Side of Life: Weather
Monday, September 21, 1981
From the Desk of Richard S. Cameron III IV
Dear Father,
School is as enjoyably challenging as ever. With the exception of a new biology teacher who wastes 10 to 20 minutes a day of class time by having his classes take part out in the forested areas of the property. He insists that using these application based techniques for the study of plant cells help many students to better understand the concepts. Even though we have not yet started to study plants nor cells. I have thus written a letter to the headmaster address my concerns on this issue.
On a better note I have made dorm leader this year. Though I accept and appreciate this leadership opportunity I am troubled by the choice of my female dorm leader counterpart. She often ignores and encourages reckless behaviour in the girls dormitories. I don't know what the school board was thinking when they allowed females to be admitted here, even if officially it's still two separate schools.
The weather here is quite agreeable.
Yours Sincerely
Richard S. Cameron III IV
Dear Dad,
How am I doing? Really? You really want to know how I'm doing?
Well let's see, first of all you let mom dump me into this stupid boarding school even though you're always going on about what a repressive environment it was and blah, blah, blah, which I'm pretty sure makes you both a jerk and a hypocrite. Secondly, one (or both) of the Overstreet twins has started following me around spouting bad poetry, like Romeo if you had whacked him in the side of the head a couple of times with a two by four. And of course, I can't even confront him about it because there are two of them and I can't tell them apart!
Oh and thirdly, I met Charlie's daughter Amelie, she's like 3 years older than me and wears a lot of eyeliner and swears in french and always smells like these clove cigarettes that her and Emerson Anderson sneak off to go smoke in the trunk room. I'm pretty sure she hates my guts. Though I honestly don't blame her, I mean what am I supposed to say? 'Hi, your dad totally abadoned you to be with my dad and has spent the last three years bonding with me and now he sends me care packages filled with alarming quantities of soup.'!
Seriously dad, I don't know how much more of this I can take. Half the people here seem to hate me and the other half are always making 'Meeks inherits the Earth' jokes like they're oh so clever. I want to yell at people half the time and cry the ther half and neither of these things seems okay here. The weather is kind of nice though, I never thought their would be so many fallen leaves in hell.
I miss you. A lot.
-Sofie
P.S. Please tell Charlie to stop sending me condoms. The soup is good though.
Dad,
They actually have a period for us to write letters home. Mandatory letter writing. It's ridiculous, there's even a black board with instructions on how to write a letter. Let's see;
Step 1: Address the receiver of your letter. Okay, check.
Step 2: Assure the receiver that you are having a wonderful and academically stimulating time at school. Well, I mean I'm not dead, or dying, or starving, or fighting in a war, or at odds with the Swedish mob so I guess things could be worse than being at this school. I'm not even going to get into the academically stimulating bit because that just sounds like...brain sex or something.
Step 3: Inform the reciever of the interesting classes and extra curricular activities you've been engaged in at Welton Academy/Welton Hall. Engaged in? Don't they mean assigned to? You told me that they did things that way when you went here but I didn't think it'd still like that. I got rowing though, I don't see why you wanted to do so badly. Mostly it just involves getting yelled at by that knob Cameron to row faster. The classes kind of suck, actually mandatory letter writing has been the best class all day.
Step 4: Tell them about your friends, who's your roommate this year? Amelie wants to start some sort of secret society thing, or restart it I guess. Her dad sort of accidentally told her about it, some sort of poetry cult thing. Do you know about this? Cause I know you and her dad used to be friends when you were in school. Mostly though we just end up hanging out in the attic and playing Monopoly Junior when we're supposed to be having 'meetings' while I avoid my roommate this Hopkins kid. I don't even know his first name because everyone just calls him Hopkins. Maybe he doesn't have a first name.
Step 5: Close your letter with a comment about the weather. Yesterday it rained. We still had to do rowing, because how better to make our lives miserable then let some tool yell at us in the rain.
Step 6: Sign your name. Emerson
P.S. Step 7: You're done! I don't think that's technically a step.
Pop!
The poetry thing isn't working! At first I just tried using some lines that sounded good from this little blue book of poetry Anderson has but she always just ends up reciting the next few lines and walking away! Then I thought I'd start writing my own poetry but that turned out even worse! You said girls liked romantic stuff like that! I thought that's how you met girls when you were my age!
Classes are pretty normal except for biology, the teacher is really into getting us 'thinking' about stuff! Like about how evolution is just a bunch of accidental changes that ended up being for the best so we should be afraid of change or something like that! He even lets us have classes out in the woods which is nice! It's weird though because he's so old! And normally old people like things the way they were back in the old days!
The weather here is okay! Mostly it's like back home!
-Drew!
Pop,
We were supposed to write our parents letters, but since Drew's already doing that I thought instead you might enjoy this picture of a Robot fighting a T-Rex.
Cheers
-John
Daddio,
This school is fantastic! You made it sound like some sort of soul-sucking hell filled with plastic pod people but I've actually met a lot of really cool people. Like the dorm adviser, Amelie, she's so wicked. Like, the other day she came up with this theory that you know a boy is ready to have sex if you can say 'vagina' to him and he doesn't blush or laugh, so she started yelling vagina really really loudly down the stairwell as people were coming up from afternoon classes. The best part was she didn't even get in trouble! She's got this whole charm thing going on so she could pretty much do anything she wanted and wouldn't get anything more than a slap on the wrist! She thinks it's a french thing because her mum is from Paris. I told her my mum was from Montreal, but that probably wasn't the same.
Even the teachers aren't that bad, my English teacher even seemed to like my better after I told him I was named after Ada Lovelace because he smiled at me in a way that was neither sarcastic or pervy like he smiles at other people. Plus, even if my teachers all sucked it wouldn't be too bad because this guy John is in all my classes and he's always drawing me these little cartoons, some of which are surprisingly educational, like the one he did of Archduke Ferdinand getting assinated. Do you think that means he likes me?
The weather is the only downside, it's nice but almost too nice. There haven't been any thunderstorms, or fog, or even a freak sandstorm! Is that too much to ask for? One little sandstorm?
-Ada
P.S. He just drew me a picture of a giant heart stomping on a city with the caption 'Love Conquers All', that's totally a sign, right?
P.P.S. If you're wondering why I'm asking you about boy stuff and not mum it's only because you are a boy and therefore have a better understand of what the hell might be going through another boy's mind.
P.P.P.S. Can I have a gecko?
Charlie,
School is fine. The teachers leave me alone as long as I show up to enough of my classes and kiss up to them enough to maintain a 72% average. The headmaster seems to adore me for some reason I can't understand because he's made me girl's dorm adviser which mostly involves me making sure everyone brushes their teeth and having weekly check-in meetings with the boys dorm adviser who is (get this) Richard Cameron the Third the Fourth. I know I should give him a break, for being such a tool and all, but he takes this adviser crap so seriously it's hard to.
Speaking of ginger kids though, I met Sophie. She seems okay, sort of bookish and sarcastic and sad and as previously mentioned, really, really, ginger. I think she's mostly scared of me or embarrassed or whatever because we mostly just awkwardly acknowledge each others existence and do our own things. Oh, but get this my friend Emerson Anderson (doesn't that sound like an insurance company or something?) is totally macking on her, in a sort of chivalrous; let-me-hold-that-door-for-you way. Em's pretty cool though, he wants to make this movie about Welton 'life' and how it's stuck in a time loop. Mostly though he only has footage of the two of us and sometimes this chick Ada sitting in the attic playing board games.
I hate the weather here though, everything else is only mildly irritating but I hate the weather. I want it to snow, or stay warm and sunny. I hate fall, it's a stupid transition season, it'd be better if it just went from sunshine to snow. It'd be more magical. Fall ruins that.
Oh dear god, I've become so...settled. I think it's time to shake things up.
-Amelie
P.S. What was the Dead Poets Society?
A.N. Okay, I had no idea when I set out to write this that it would turn into this, but I think I like it. Anyways, this is a very, very, very belated birthday gift for Thyme, so I hope you don't hate it. As for me it's my birthday tommorow so I'm going to bed so tommorow will get here faster.
-C