Dear Mommy,
I miss you. I went to Judy's house and to Ricky's house.
I stepped on a nail and I had to have a tetanus shot.
I got the shot in the rump.
It feels like penicillin and it hurts.
I screamed bloody merder.
Carl just pooped in the bathtub.
Mike, My friend and me was climbing trees and Mike feel and I branch tore open his skin and he had to have sticthes, six of them.
I'm not going to climb trees no more he got so mad he kicked the tree.
I am having fun.
I love you. Laurie
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Note: this letter was written on newspaper paper with pencil. All writing style, grammar and spelling are exactly as written. Laurie had gone to spend summer vacation in Western New York area with her Grandma and Grandpa. I think it was about 1972. The other children mentioned are Laurie's cousins.
I think it is funny that after writing about all these death defying adventures, she says, "I'm having fun"! I was mortified and worried to death i may never see my little girl again. When I called my mother to give her heck for not taking better care of my girl, she got me to shut up real quick when she said: "At least she got a Tetanus shot. I never did that for you!"
She was right. And just to clarify... it's not that my mother was unkind, just unaware. Back in those times kids got to run around and play unsupervised quite a bit, more so in my generation and considerably more in my mother's. Today, I think kids don't get quite the enriching independent adventures as we did back then.
