10 July 2011

Letters to Owen


I wrote this letter by hand to my son the other day and left it on the table for his mother to read to him out loud when she got home from work (he is, alas, still in the womb). Today is our due date. Pray for us.

Dear Owen ____ Coffman,

                Listen here, little man, I don’t intend to make cutting deals a central part of my parenting strategy with you. Most of the time I will tell you what to do and expect you to do it fairly well in accordance with my prescriptions. Moreover, I imagine that I am already offering you the best deal that you will ever receive apart from grace when I promise to provide at least 18 years of three meals per day (that’s close to 20,000 free meals), 18 years of free clothing and free vacations and even free life advice. This last offer will last forever. But I feel compelled to sweeten the deal. You see, your mother is in a hellatious work situation right now and your father is something of a deadbeat this summer. I could say that I am pursuing the scholarly life (there is a sizeable stack of books beside me right now with highly intellectual subject matter), but that is only partially accurate. In any event, your arrival will hasten your mother’s retreat from this awful job, plus, we are rather excited to meet you simply for the sake of meeting you, so how about this: if you come sometime on your due date or before, I will take you on the trip of your choice when you graduate high school (within reason: for example, I don’t know what space travel will look like by that point, and within the family budget: your father will probably never be a wealthy man). So there it is. In ink. I love you and can’t wait to meet you. Now that you are fully incentivized, get out here.

Your father,
Toby Alan
DON’T READ THIS PART OUT LOUD!!!
P.S. Mom, I will probably make him this deal in any event. But that’s just between us.

No comments:

Post a Comment