Each summer, I spend a weekend with a group of my best girlie buddies at a cottage in Muskoka, solving the world's problems and discussing earthy matters. Oh, who am I kidding, we drink and dance and swim and suntan and read garbage entertainment magazines on the dock.
A few years ago, one of my friends brought with her the diaries she kept as a teenager. We had a few belly laughs as she read out some of the sillier passages before putting the books into the fire.
This year, there will also be reading, and it will be much sillier. I have challenged my girlyfriends to bring along any old love notes, letters and assorted detritus from their youthful romances. We will read them aloud before depositing them into the flames.
I will bring shoeboxes, the ones stuffed with the letters (yes, on paper, with stamps and everything) from the admittedly very few sweethearts of my past.
I now know why I've kept these things all these years: it's for the comedy!
I'm not exactly sure of the contents of all the letters, but I know there's a poem about my beautiful "blue eyes that sparkle in darkness". Dude, my eyes are green. No wonder we broke up. Another guy's letters tended toward the porny, the 1990s version of sexting, I guess.
I also know somewhere in there is a long lovely tome from a biker dude I went out with twice, but upon whom I clearly made an impression. All I can think of when I think of that guy is my poor, poor father who was so very worried when a scary looking man showed up at the farm to take away his beloved 20 year old daughter, to who knows where. Looking back, I imagine my dad must have been so torn, wanting to give me wings but hoping I did not return with tattoos and a nose ring and who knows what kind of carnal knowledge.
I will not, of course, get rid of the letters written by my high school sweetheart, who is now my husband. Those stay forever. Not just for the comedy. They're for blackmail. Sweetie turns 50 later this year, and there may be another public reading to come.
Insert evil laugh here.
