letter to flyboy

Dear Author Who Should Have Known Better,
Remembering things I care about is easy. It’s all that other useless crap that’s hard. Tell me how diagramming sentences or conjugating French verbs is ever going to help me fly a plane? When I’m flying, I don’t much care how clean my room is or whether or not I made the bed. It doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. Just flying.

About the dog. There’s always a dog.  Haven’t you figured that out yet? Madison, Zero, Max, Guster, Fuzzbucket and Baron. There’s probably more. But there’s always a dog.

Signed, 
Flyboy

Dear Needy Author,
I need lots of things. I need to know why my mom never talked about my siser but why she sent me here to live just before she died but I probably never will on account of the fact that my mom is dead now. I need to know all the things Mr. Mac knows about native plants but I probably never will on account of that thing that happened that started the whole story in the first place. I need to fit somewhere, anywhere. I’m tried of being told to "bloom wherever I’m planted" because planting something means setting down roots and roots tie you to something, someone and near as I can figure, I’m not tied to anything.

No roots makes it kind of hard to stand up for anything at all.

Signed, 
Plant kid

Dear Nosy Author,
The trouble with little sisters is they’re so darn cute all the time. Or they think they are. Or everyone around you thinks they are.  Do you have any idea how many times someone pushed me out of the way so they could get to her and go gaga over her stupid baby noises?  

Lots of times it’s the same thing with dogs. But different. Or maybe it’s me that’s different now. I won’t make the same mistake with Max that I made with my little sister.

Of course I probably won’t get the chance, either.

Signed, 
Frankie

Dear Author Who Isn’t Really Empty,
I know how you feel. I know, people say that all the time but really, I know just how you feel. I remember when my CFI had me try a stall for the first time. It was a good flying day, clear sky, no wind. The 152 was humming along. Okay, humming is too nice a word. Flying in the 152 is like being locked in a metal shed with a lawnmower going full blast. But that’s okay. I liked the noise. I liked that I had to concentrate on the voice in the headset for any directions from my CFI in the seat next to me. I liked feeling the power of plane vibrate all around me. With my hands on the yoke and my feet on the rudders I could feel the airplane hum up from my fingertips and down to my toes. It made my whole body come alive. It made me FEEL alive. 

Stall practice was the only time I’ve been flying that I felt like I might need a barf bag. 

First we were drifting then all at once the stall horn blared and the right wing dropped. I thought for sure we were going to go into a spin and I was praying my CFI would be able to yank us out of it before we crashed. 

Maybe you think my CFI was crazy to have me do something that sounds so dangerous but the way he explained it to me made sense. He said you do stalls in practice so you can avoid them in real life. 

So maybe writing my story is like stall practice for you. 

What do you think?

Signed,
Flyboy

Dear Author With Too Many Ideas,

No problem, I understand. I’m composting right now. 

Signed,
Plant kid

Dear Author Putting 2 + 2 Together, 

The answer is yes.
But please don’t ask me to talk about my sister yet. I’m not ready.

Signed,
Frankie

Dear Author Who Can’t Make Up Her Mind,
I’m going to tell you some things you already know and if it sounds like it’s coming from you and not from me, remember how much of yourself you have poured into me.

I am you. I am the insecure, can’t make his mind, why doesn’t anyone love me you. I am the you who doesn’t understand you are afraid to let people know how you feel, why you worry so much about what they will see in you and why you put up a wall that keep people at a distance. I am the you who can’t sleep because of worrying all the time. I am the you who wants a family and doesn’t feel like they deserve it.

Keep that in mind when it comes to telling my story. Trust yourself.

I need you to tell the truth about me because I’m too afraid to do it for myself. I need you to explain to people how I really feel about what my mother did and what I really remember about my dad. I need you to find a way to support me so that people don’t freak out when they hear the whole story.

I need you.

Isn’t that enough?

Signed,
Flyboy

Dear Insecure Author,
My sister? You know I think I remember my mom talking about a sister. They had a fight about something a long time ago, right after I was born and she went away and I stayed behind. I bet she wasn’t so thrilled to see me show up on her doorstep after mom died, was she?

I do like the attic bedroom. I like being able to open the window and reach right out and pluck an orange off the tree. I like the way the mourning doves gather on the roof of the garage and peck around at the scraps of bread I throw out for them. I’m not so crazy about the way the stairs go straight up and the railing is a little wobbly. I’m afraid I’m going to fall and land at the bottom of the stairs on that metal grate for the furnace.

I’m mostly okay just hanging out with Mr. Mac and learning from him but I’m thinking me and my sister don’t have a lot to say (except for when she’s yelling at me.) I could use a friend my own age. Think you could work on that for me? There’s this one kid at school, Benny, who seems okay. We worked together on the science project and he didn’t think my worms were stupid at all. There’s Alison too, but she’s a girl and I don’t want her to think I like her special like. Besides, her dad is the one with all those fancy roses so maybe I better not have much to do with her.

Signed,
Plant kid

Dear Person Who Keeps Ignoring Me Even Though Everyone Says You Should Be Writing About Me First, 

I am not talking to you anymore.
Not at all.
No.

I am not even going to tell you about what happened when I went to see Max.

Signed,
Lost boy 

Dear Author,
If I’m made up of pieces of you (looking for that reader connection you love to talk about so much) is it any wonder that I’m a serious kid? How much time did you spend when you were my age laughing and having fun and how much time did you spend in your room worrying about things you couldn’t change? If you don’t like what you see in me maybe you better quit using me as a mirror.

I can’t remember the first time I went flying. Or the second or the third or many times after that. My dad, my NOW dad, told me that my real dad used to strap my carseat in the seat of the big P and take me just about everywhere with him, except for when he was filming. I think I remember flying somewhere for Christmas. I wanted to go to the North Pole and see Santa Claus and we went somewhere where the snow was piled up high on each side of the runway and there was barely enough room for the big P to touch down without jamming a wing into a snowdrift. We never found Santa but I remember drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows in some old shack while we waited for the weather to clear and listening to my dad play hangar trivia with his friends.

How does flying make me feel? How does writing make YOU feel? Flying makes me feel like I am alive and free and capable of doing almost anything, of being almost anything, even a good kid.

Signed,
Flyboy

Dear Author Who Let Someone Intimidate Her Away From My Story,
You tell me to find my own way and when I do, you get mad. You shouldn’t talk about me. Not yet. You’re not ready. That much is obvious. Yes, plants are boring to some people. There’s so much that takes place underground and now you’ve let someone convince you that you don’t have the skills to bring my story to the surface.

Maybe I was wrong to trust you with it.

But here’s the thing, Mr. Mac says that sometimes we have to give people second and third chances. Sometimes even more chances than that because if you do that enough, well people will surprise you. But you have to believe they’re going to surprise you. If you don’t believe then it doesn’t matter if you tell my story or not.

Signed,
Plant kid

Dear Author,
Today was a good day and then a bad day and then a really, really bad day.

I went to see my dad and told him all about Max and everything that’s been going on. Then I went to see the gypsy lady but I got lost and ended up on the east side after dark. This big kid chased me for the longest time, I guess he thought I had some money (ha!) but I finally lost him. When I got home my mom had locked the front door and wouldn’t let me so I spent the night on the front porch. No dinner, of course.

Signed,
Kid who still has no name

PS – it was raining.

Dear Author Who Thinks She’s So Smart,

What did you think I was going to do when you put the opportunity right in front of me like that? 

Signed,
Flyboy, grounded for the moment

Dear Author Whose Doing a Pretty Good Job Bringing Me to Life,
 
Mr. Mac explained to me how sometimes people do things without thinking and then later, it turns out that they meant to do it all along. But it was their subconcious that got things started. I don’t know if that’s true for me because I didn’t even know Mr. Mac until I, well, until that first day when I just went ahead and did what someone paid me to do and then you know how THAT all turned out. I guess I could have said no but it didn’t look like it would be that big of a deal. And I needed the money.

Maybe I knew something was going to happen. Sort of like the way dogs can tell an earthquake is coming only they can’t tell the humans around them. So the dog starts acting all scared or goofy or something and the human hasn’t got a clue as to what’s going on. Maybe it was like that.

Or maybe it was just fate but Mr. Mac says believing in fate is for lazy folks who are afraid to dream.

Signed,
Plant Kid

PS – You think maybe you could tell me where I’m living because I see someone in the house with me but I sure as heck don’t know who she is.

PPS – Sarcasm isn’t going to change anything

Dear Author Who is just  a big old Chicken you-know-what,

Yes, some people are going to be mad at you when you write my story but does that mean it shouldn’t be written? Are you one of those people who just walks by the homeless people and wish they didn’t exisit? Do you sit in your fancy house and push the remote control button every time you see a picture of a starving kid come up on the screen.

I’ve got news for you – pretending like something doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away. Believe me, I’ve tried. Every night before I can fall asleep I pretend there isn’t a monster in the house but every morning I wake up, he’s still there.

My dad is the one who brought me and Max together for the first time. My real dad. Not that loser of a guy who convinced my mom to marry him just so he could get her money. I was scared of Max at first. He was pretty scary looking. Still is, only not to me anymore. That first time I met Max all I could think was how much I didn’t want to tick him off because I knew it would be real messy in a hurry and that most of the mess would be me.

My dad thought me and Max needed each other. That made me laugh so hard that it made my dad laugh hard, hard enough to bring a crowd of people around us (we were sitting on the front porch) and pretty soon the whole neighborhood was laughing right along with us and me and Max, we were on our way to being best friends.

Signed,
Kid who misses his dad

Dear Author,
Isn’t it enough that you’re poking around in the thoughts in my head, now you want to know about the thoughts I have in my bedroom (which I might remind you is supposed to be a private place, as is the shower). No. Absolutely not. Girls are trouble. They mess with your head and play games and I don’t have time for that.  And you do remember my mother don’t you? And what she did? With my luck any girl I meet will be just like my mother, ripping anything I love right out of my life and I don’t think I could handle that. Back off, will ya?
Flyboy

Dear Author Who is Trying to Blame the Lack of Plot on Me,
I don’t know much about a lot of things, especially writing books, but here’s something Mr. Mac told me before he died. You’ve got to believe in things you can’t see before you see things you won’t believe. He was talking about gardening but I’m thinking it might work for telling stories too.

Here’s the thing about gardening. You plant the seeds, water them sometimes, ignore them othertimes (especially if they’re native plants) and then you wait. And while you’re waiting, there’s a whole lot of something going on under the ground, deep down in the dirt. Seeds are opening and roots are unfurling, stretching down deep toward the water table. Earthworms are churning the soil and tons little bugs and mites and tiny things we can’t see are doing just what nature intends them to do. But up top all you can see is dirt. Piles and piles of dirt and not a stick of nothing growing in it nowhere. It’d be easy to give up then and just roll out some plastic grass and call it a day. But if you’re the believing type, you just wait. And then you wait some more. And then one day you walk out and you see a lot of those seeds you plant have pushed their way up through the dirt just looking for the sunshine and blue sky. Some of them still wearing bits of the seed hull on their hat like a lopsided hat. And just like that, you have a garden.

So I’m thinking maybe plot is like that – there could be a whole lot of something going on under the surface of my story, you just need to plant the seeds.

Plant kid

Dear Author Ignoring My Story,
I gave you the first line of the book last night. It led you right to the first scene, with me and Max and meeting the gypsy lady for the first time. I know you remember it because I heard you repeating it before you went to sleep last night and in the shower AND on the way to work.

I’ll visit Max as soon as you give ME a name and commit to my story.

Lost boy

Dear Person Who THINKS She is in Charge of MY Story,

First I thought it was an accident. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe I meant to do it (which is dumb because I didn’t even know that Mrs. B was going to be there. I didn’t know she was going to have her iPod plugged in and turned up so loud that she wouldn’t hear me coming. I mean, come on, old people don’t use iPods, do they?) so I guess it was really just an accident.

And it’s not like I killed her. If you kill someone it can’t be an accident, can it? Killing someone is permanent. You can’t undo it. You can’t fix like you can fix a broken mailbox and a fence. She didn’t even want to go inside. She just asked me to go into her house and bring  out a couple of cans of soda.

But you can’t trust anyone, don’t you know that by now? And you really shouldn’t trust me because I’ll just let you down.

Signed,
Flyboy

Dear Author Whom I Know in Her Heart Really Wants to be Working on my story,

I can’t tell you about my “thing” but maybe you should check the books on Mr. Mac’s nightstand. Under the plant books, there’s another one, a medical one. He’s got the pages bookmarked. 

Signed,
Kid with perpetually dirty fingernails

To anyone who reads this,

They took Max away today. They won’t tell me where. I don’t know if I will ever see him again.

I will never, ever forgive YOU for letting this happen. NEVER.

Signed,
The only person who REALLY loved Max

Dear Author,

 Yes I broke my promise to my dad. So what! I had a chance to do something important to me for a change and I took it. I am sick and tired of trying to be like Mr. Perfect. Gag! Besides, now that we’re moving, he’ll never know about it, will he?

Unless you tell him. And you better not. You know what happens when people snitch. You remember what happened, don’t you? Uh huh. I thought you might.

How about helping me pack up my room now?

Your MC

Dear Word Person,

Do you have ANY idea how important Mr. Mac was to me? You don’t, do you? If you did you wouldn’t be trying to make me leave the yard. Mr. Mac was the only one who understood me. He didn’t care about my, well, you know. It didn’t matter to him. For someone who reads a lot of books you’re not very bright, are you?

Disgruntled and dirty character without a name to call his own

Dear person who is ignoring me,

I refuse to call you the author of my story because you’re not working on it. It’s cold out here. I’m hungry. Max doesn’t look too good. There’s a lot of blood from where, well, you know. I’m pretty sure his leg is broke too. But you don’t care about any of that, do you? The gypsy lady would help, I know she would, but I think they scared her off for good this time.

What am I supposed to do now?

Max’s protector