An Open Letter To: The New Tenants

Dear New Tenants in Our Old Apartment:


I know you intercepted both a package and a card meant for our new baby. I don't know why you chose to keep both these things, despite my note on your door with my phone number and email address so I could come pick them up. 


I also know you cashed the $200 check my aunt included in the card meant for the baby. That takes a lot of balls, New Tenants. Unless you coincidentally have the exact same name as my youngest child - which is highly unlikely - I have no idea why or how your bank went ahead and deposited $200 into your account. I can only hope someone there catches this oversight at some point and fines you $200.


Here's what else I hope for you:


I hope every time you get in line at the supermarket, the person ahead of you pays in pennies.


I hope every time you try to have a picnic in the park, a sudden thunderstorm breaks.


I hope you get an infestation of mosquitoes this summer. (I used to live there. It's entirely possible.)


I hope you develop chronic ingrown toenails.


I hope every time you place a food order it gets delivered to you missing one item.


I hope your laptop, portable DVD player, smart phone, iPad, e-reader, or other personal entertainment device dies five minutes into a long flight.


I hope you never get a table at Al Di La.


I hope you never get a cab in the rain.


I hope your DVR always cuts off your favorite shows 2 minutes before the ending.


And mostly, I hope that someone does this to you some day, so you'll know how it feels when people try to celebrate something special with you, but accidentally send gifts to your old address, and the people there keep your stuff instead of calling or emailing you to come get them.


Jerks.


Most sincerely,
The Previous Tenant

An Open Letter: Re: Baths

Attn:
American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International
President Obama
The United Nations Children's Fund
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz


My name is the Duke of Juban. I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, and I am twelve weeks old. I write to you today to bring to your attention a most grave injustice: my baths.


The woman who proposes to be my mother gives me baths. I am not sure if you are aware or not, but baths involve my ancient mortal foe, water. Water on my skin! In my hair! This woman tricks me into trusting her with my love and devotion and well-being by feeding me, playing with me, holding me, and putting me to sleep, and just as I start to trust her she thrusts me into a vat of warm water and cleans me. 


I know. I know!!!


The water hitting my skin may as well be boiling tar. My bath chair may as well be lined with needles. The soap she uses may as well be broken glass. The washcloth may as well have teeth. And the towel she dries me off with may as well be made of the most abrasive of sandpaper - you know, the kind they use to sand off old paint. 

"Torture of St. John the Evangelist" photo from
http://www.occesussex.co.uk/apps/blog/entries/show/935880-st-john-before-the-latin-gate

After twelve long weeks on this godforsaken earth, my so-called "loving mother" has not taken the hint. Baths are a wretched, heinous form of child abuse. Had the good lord wanted me to smell good, she would not have crusted my ears with spit-up, or peppered my scalp with cradle cap, or put that stinky lint between my fingers and toes, or made my butt go poop.


Never, in the history of babykind, has any child suffered as greatly as I do. Never before has any infant been forced to endure the kind of sadism I encounter on a weekly, sometimes twice or thrice weekly, basis! I fear for my future. I fear for my very soul.


Baths are unnatural, inhuman, and a disgrace to humankind. As a helpless minor I demand you do something to stop this evil woman and her baths!


Humbly yours,
The Duke of Juban, Baby, American Citizen, Future Voter, Brooklyn Borough Resident, Bath Victim