Dear Mom,

Berating your children in e-mails is no way to demonstrate your unconditional love.  I think I read that somewhere in a parenting book.  As for your threat that “God always wins,”  please enjoy this list of anagrams I have compiled:

Wigs always nod.

Wily saw gonads.

Sold wig as yawn.

Yawl ass dig now.

Wild son saw gay.

Gay swan so wild.

Low as windy gas.

A glassy window.

Alas downy wigs.

Wow dying salsa.

Old swings away.

Sows gnaw daily.

I know some of them don’t make a lot of sense,  but what the hell,  God can put those in his pipe and smoke ‘em.

Love,

Ami

Dear Ben,

Remember when you called me crazy? Well, guess what? I’m not crazy—you are. You pull out your own teeth with pliers and keep them in a little wooden box. When your friends come over, you invite them to have a look at your “shark teeth.” That’s crazy, buddy.

You also collect ceramic roosters. There’s nothing sane about that, my friend, nothing sane at all.

Yours,

A few days ago I scored the deal of the century: a bacon wallet for $1.49. It was marked $14.49, but after leaving I checked my receipt and noticed that I’d been charged only $1.49. I have been talking about it for three days. I’ve called friends and family I haven’t spoken with in months, just for an opportunity to mention the deal I got.

One might wonder why I didn’t feel compelled to go back into the store, point out the mistake, and hand over the appropriate amount of money. Well, here’s why: I am a bad person.

I do have some scruples. Had it been a small mom-and-pop shop, I would have given them the entire amount, but it wasn’t. It was a large corporation, and bacon wallets should be free. Besides, I have done so many shitty things, there’s no going back now anyway. I can just add my misappropriated bacon wallet to the list of crimes that, if there really were an afterlife, would cost me my soul.

Crime #1. I hate my brother-in-law’s dog because she steps on my feet. I’m pretty sure she does it on purpose, because she always looks back at me with a smirk.

Crime #2. I always judge people by their shoes.

Crime #3. This cumulative crime involves the developmentally disabled and/or their immediate family members. Highlights: I put a diaper on the head of a developmentally disabled person and told him he looked beautiful in his new hat. I laughed at a morbidly obese disabled girl while she sat on a gymnasium floor, eating a chilidog, wearing a tutu. I hid socks from the mother of a disabled person I was caring for because she yelled at me about him missing his socks; by the time I quit, I’d stuffed about forty of them in the back of a closet. I slipped notes under the door of a paranoid man’s room, demanding that he surrender all of his hair. The list goes on.

Crime #4. When I was very young, I sat on a kitten so it would stay next to me. It died. I didn’t mean to kill it. It was a very Of Mice and Men type of love. I just wanted to pet it and hold it, but I’m pretty sure kitten killing, no matter what your motivations are, is frowned upon.

Crime #5. I punched Ethan because he sniffed me without my permission.

Crime #6. In high school, I sent a Japanese foreign exchange student I was partnered with to Rite-Aid to buy a bottle of perseverance.

Crime #7. Often, when Ethan is trying to have a serious conversation with me, I interrupt him with the fart machine. I keep going until he eventually leaves and I’m left wondering why I am the only one with a sense of humor.

Crime #8. Perhaps the worst crime of all, I scared my three-year-old niece while she was taking a bath, by running into the bathroom screaming while wearing a horrible clown mask. Twice.

Scaring children is a learned behavior that I can blame on my mother. She used to sneak up on me and scare the crap out of me while I was in my “dance tent” practicing my routines. I was intent on getting out of that one-horse-town.

She used to make me go outside to turn the porch light off. This meant walking a long way back to the front door in total darkness. After I’d mustered up the courage to run toward the front door, shrieking and sobbing, she would pop out of the shadows to laugh at me. I used to think she derived her strength from my tears because I never actually saw her eat food, but she seemed to grow more powerful from the daily humiliation.

Now, I always feel like someone is watching me. Even in the bathroom, I’ll say, “I know you’re there,” just in case. One of my biggest kicks is getting an accidental discount on a bacon-themed wallet, and I fear that, after my children are grown and Ethan finally realizes how horrible I am, I will have nothing to keep me warm at night but this list of wrongdoings.