Dear sir or madam

I was a very earnest fifteen year old.
I think it was a combination of too much folk music, and not enough contact with the opposite sex.
Anyway, one day I discovered the letters to the editors page.
I was like whoa, you can write the newspaper letters and they will actually print them.
So I gathered up all the righteous indignation I could muster and sat down and wrote this magnificent
condemnation of the middle aged and the middle class.
I chided them for living in the past, I wagged my finger at them for not taking us seriously.
Sure, they had the depression and World War Two, but we had stuff too.
The threat of nuclear holocaust, the war in Vietnam, segregation ...
I went on and on.
I practically quoted The Eve of Destruction word for word.
It was my masterpiece.
I felt like a young Thomas Paine.
I put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, and put it on my desk, and then forgot about it completely.
I had a short attention span even back then.
I got home from school the next day and remembered the letter, and I decided to toss it.
I decided to let the middle aged middle class have their day, and besides I knew it would cause all sorts of shit at home.
I looked around, nope, couldn't find it.
No biggie.
Maybe I hadn't even written a letter.
Short attention span, remember.

Fast forward a couple of days.

I get home from school. I went in the afternoons, I usually got home at about five forty five.
Dinner was already on the table.
My stupid son of a bitch of a brother in law walks in.
Yeah, my sister and the dipshit were living with us at the time, he had just gotten out of the air force and he was trying to find himself, and he usually found himself parked on the couch watching game shows and soap operas.
But I digress.
My stupid son a bitch of a brother in law walks into the kitchen with the paper under his arm, and a shit eating grin on his face, and starts laughing, and I knew he was laughing at me, and I knew why he was laughing at me.
It was the letter,
Damn, I hated being laughed at in general and by my ssoaboabil in particular.
Yeah, it was the letter. My mother found it on my desk, stuck a stamp on it and mailed it.
She didn't mail if out of good faith.
If the letter hadn't been in a envelope she would have read it.
She mailed it because she wanted to know what was in it!
Mother's of teenage boys are evil evil bitches.
Anyway, my ssoaboabil had his laugh, my sister said awwww, isn't that cute, my mother said she didn't understand it but it was well written, and my father said where's the sports section.

So ...
I guess from that humble beginning sprang The Grand Ennui.
That humble beginning and a 38 year gap.