A letter to lady in charge. . .

When I was in junior high I had to write a letter to Santa Clause as an assignment, plus write back as Santa. I am not sure what the point of the assignment was, other than busy work, or maybe an exercise in writing using different voices?

Either way, I was so full of cleverness that I wrote a letter that was from the point of view of a child with violent tendencies and asked for toy guns and other violent toys. My socially conscious Santa wrote back and said NO, instead you are getting a stuffed animal to love, and a puppy, and books, and maybe some therapy. My Santa then cited several contemporary war mongering world leaders as examples of what violent toys could lead to.

My mom thought it was clever and sent a copy of it to the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, and if I remember correctly it ran in the newspaper that year. I have looked several times this holiday season to find my copy of that silly letter. So far I have not found it, but I still have plenty of unopened boxes it could be in.

What motivated my hunt? Right before the Holiday season my Matthew wrote Michelle Obama. When other kids were writing Santa he went to person in charge of the person in charge. The back-story here is that Matthew was given his reminder to pay his school lunch dues. Either the note has changed, or he actually read it this time and he noticed that it states that children who do not pay their outstanding balances will be fed sandwiches and milk until it is paid. Matthew does not go to a wealthy school, many of his classmates are on free lunch, and the entire school gets free breakfast provided they show up early enough. The same day he got the note he saw that Mrs. Obama was on the news talking about the school lunch program. No one put him up to write the letter; he just took it on himself to address what he sees as a big issue.

So here it is, more or less in its entirety.

Dear Mashel Obama
My school and prabrobly other schools threaten kids for lunch money, at my school it is a sandwich and milk unlis you pay. I would like to send this leter because I don’t think schools should threaten kids for lunch money, because my mom and dad work super hard and get paid every other monday and pay for my lunch, but other kids parents maybe don’t get paid as much and don’t get at least three weeks of vacation time, and that is hard. Plus my mom works for the capital of Oklahoma City Oklahoma, my dad works for At The Beach and go a promoshine and so were moving to Denver Colorado in April 2011, and that’s BIG!!
From Matthew Alexander Kinkade, Oklahoma/Denver Colorado

My baby is worried his friends might be hungry and doesn’t want anyone to miss out on a hot lunch! Regardless of your politics, it is hard to argue with a 9 year old who doesn’t want his friends to be hungry.