Letter 88

October 9, 2011

Dear Mom,

How are you? Well, hopefully. I'm doing alright and hopefully getting up to speed here in this college that few are graduates of. I'm basing this letter on both the premise that the sooner I get it started the sooner I'll be able to mail it, and the hope that it won't be irretrievably lost in the cell I'm in now. I don't have time to include all that is happening around me, the things that I've set in motion purposefully or otherwise. I'm likely to be interrupted by those inscrutable Mensa candidates at least once, so please bear this in  mind if I start to wander.

I don't know if you know this, but the days for visitation are on the weekends and holidays. I'm unsure of the hours, but this schedule conveniently allows for a visit on my birthday! It is difficult to keep my focus on the information I need to be sure you have as there is a tsunami of noise coming at me from outside the cell right now...the natives are (always) restless!

Some, my celly for example, are more tolerable and good-natured than the vast tide of thuggish idiocrats all around me. As I stated, my celly is an exception. At first, before I knew him I mean, he seemed a quietly reserved individual. But when I thought to baffle him into insensitivity with my brilliance his intelligence began to show through. He is younger than me but I don't know how old he actually is...as one learns not to pry for information that is not forthcoming.

In any event, tomorrow starts the next phase of my progression away from the realm of inmates and guards. I'm unsure of just how to approach this final bit of nonsense that seems to be going on here. None of my former stratagems will work for me in this situation. I have to at least make a showing and once involved some useful knowledge might spring loose from me. It is like when you would take me to see Dr. Philpot as a child...all would be well until the nurse called me Jimmy, at which point I knew I would get an injection. Remember how I loved those?

Last night I had a strange dream. I dreamt I was on the North Bahamian blob-sled team. Blob sledding was different from other kinds of sledding in that in a blob-sled run four team members had to maintain streamlined positions without benefit of a sled. Hence, the blob sled. The second night here I did not get a chance to shower so I had a nightmare of being eaten alive by ants.

They are going to dim the lights soon so I will finish this tomorrow. It is tomorrow but I let the fact that it is Columbus Day totally slip my mind and thereby have another day to wrap this up. Also, I let slip the fact Dad is now another year older as well. I'll send him a belated card when I'm better situated myself. It doesn't appear as if the smurf population will get today off from anything but that isn't a huge thing as we barely are active at all. And so it goes, for now.

Of utmost importance, I feel, is not working toward graduating from the program but in figuring ways to avoid running afoul of the many personalities so deeply entrenched in being in a program. That will require tact, strategy, and diplomacy on my part, far more so than the actual assignments. The worst misfortune I continually worry about is that my letters get misplaced before they are mailed. So, that leaves me with a need to contact you with information I consider important enough to have written down, but then need a filing system to keep track of it. I'll tell you of some other oddities in the way this camp is run in another letter, or face to face. For now, since this letter has information you may need in it, I'll drop it in the mail. I look forward to seeing you.

Much love and regards,
James