Dear Pen Pal

By JJ Lair

Joe and Cate are fourth graders matched in a school program to be pen pals. They do the assignment by writing about their day to day lives. They continue after the assignment ends. The letters become more personal as each write about their dreams, plans, problems and secrets. 

One day Joe decides to stop writing withouth telling Cate. They move on with their lives giving little thought to the past and those letters. 

They meet in their twenties and it leads to mishaps and twisted emotions. 

Joe is a sportswriter witha beautiful fiance. Cate wants to know why Joe stopped writing her. 

What will happen when she finds out? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: JJ Lair
• Release date: Jan 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215597286

JJ Lair

JJ Lair lives by historical sites where stories of the paranormal thrive. His writes about pop culture and history on his blog and website. 

Book preview

2022

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Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/RLSather

Table of Contents

2022

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

September 20, 1979

Dear Pen Pal,

I never met you. My teacher told me to write. My teacher says these letters are going to Canton, Ohio. I don’t know how our teachers made this deal to make us pen pals, but here’s my letter.

Do you like baseball? Do you like the Jaycees? They are a minor league team here. I like them more than the major league teams. When I play baseball when I grow up, I want to play for the Jaycees. I play right field in little league.

My Dad said you have other baseball teams where you are. Do you play baseball? A lot of guys here play soccer. It’s fun but everyone kicks me in the shins and knees. I hurt my knee playing last week. I bled so much you can still see it on my pants.

Do you watch the same TV shows as me? Do you listen to music?

I live in Staten Island New York. It’s by the Atlantic Ocean. I live in a house with my father and my mother. I’m nine years old. I have a lot of friends from baseball and school. 

I guess we have to write each other all school year so we could write about baseball. We get graded if we write all year so we have to have something to write about.

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Your pen pal,

Joe

October 1, 1979

Dear Joe,

My teacher picked you out of a big bag of letters. She put all the letters from Staten Island, New York in a big bag and gave them out to everyone. I don’t know anything about baseball so I don’t know what the Jaycees are. My brother watches baseball and he said the Jaycees won’t win the division. Whatever that means.

I roller skate. I have to wear kneepads to save my knees. My Mom says I can’t hurt my knees because I wear skirts at school. Boys never wear pads. You got to look cool in front of everyone. It gets hot when I wear all those pads and skate.

I play a lot of different games when I’m in school. You should see all the dolls I have at home. I have stuffed rabbit doll and a baby doll and a Playtime Suzy doll and a lot of other stuff. I have a dollhouse that’s almost as big as me.

My Dad says I should tell you about myself. I’m eight years old. My birthday is in a couple of days. I have straight brown hair and I have a couple of freckles. I get pretty good grades in school, but my Mom and Dad said I should get better grades. A lot of my friends get money for A’s. My parents don’t give me money. They don’t give my brother money.

I watch TV, but I don’t know what you watch.

My teacher says we’re going to write every month so we have to find something to write about. I have a diary that I write in too. I can fill up a page really quick, I can’t tell you all the secrets I put in my diary. I think my teacher wants to read this before we send it. If she don’t read this, maybe we can tell secrets to each other.

We are like a thousand miles away from each other. I’m going to put some of this in my diary tonight so I remember when I wrote you.

Your pen pal,

Cate

October 11, 1979

Dear Cate,

You’re a girl! I can’t believe they gave my letter to a girl. I don’t know what to write to a girl about. I don’t talk to girls where I live. My Mom said I should still write to you even though my teacher said she wouldn’t read this. I could just show my teacher an empty envelope and get away with it. My Mom said it might be fun to talk to you, but she doesn’t want to write you.

I don’t want to tell you any secrets. I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you. Why do girls tell secrets and pass notes in school anyway? The only secrets I could tell you are about school and you don’t know anyone here.

Tell your brother the Jaycees are winning the division now. They won games all summer. I didn’t get to see them because my Mom doesn’t like baseball and my Dad has to work a lot of late nights. I play soccer in the afternoons after school now. My knees are all scraped up. I scored two goals for my team yesterday.

Maybe in the next letter, I’ll explain baseball to you. It will give us something to write about. I don’t follow football much. I don’t know what kind of winter sports you have. I really don’t want to read about your dolls. I don’t even play with action figures. I have friends with whole cases of Army guys and space alien characters. I have a big collection of baseball cards. I have some small cars. I don’t know a lot about cars. I stack books up and make the cars do jumps.

I’ll write you next month.

Joe

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October 20, 1979

Dear Joe,

You don’t write a lot in your letters. You don’t like dolls. I guess that means you don’t play house. I get my brother to play dad for my dolls. I have to get him to play because he can move the crib around my room. He complains the entire time. He’s a year older than me.

The Jaycees won the Minor League World Series, but my brother wanted them to lose. He watches baseball all the time. Now it’s football time because baseball is over. Football is big around here. The Pro Football Hall of Fame is only a few miles from here.  I don’t understand some of it. Why do the players run into the pile up instead of going around it? Why does it take four hours to play? My dad and my brother yell at the TV and make a mess out of the TV room when football is on. I go play with my dolls. 

My Mom made meatloaf yesterday. She puts too much celery in it. It gets all crunchy inside. I put a ton of ketchup on it to make it better. It’s like a giant hamburger, but it’s not on a roll. I put ketchup on hamburgers. I put ketchup on everything. I put ketchup on spaghetti. Mom says it’s gross when I do that. She hates that I use so much ketchup. I tell her that sauce and ketchup are both made out of tomatoes so it’s no big deal. I like ketchup more. I think when they make vampire movies; they use ketchup instead of real blood. They both look alike. When I cut myself, I licked my own blood. It has no taste.

I don’t think my Mother is going to make spaghetti for dinner tonight. She made it last week. I can’t cook. I made brownies once. I forgot to use oil on the pan and they stuck to the pan. We had to use spoons to get it out. Mom threw out the pan instead of trying to wash it. I cooked popcorn once. I forgot to use oil then too. I burnt the whole pot. It made the whole house a cloud of smoke. Mom had to throw the pot out because the black popcorn stuck to the bottom of the pot. We could smell burnt popcorn in the house for days.

I want to learn how to cook. My Mom makes it look easy. She can also make pies. I don’t know how the inside of a pie doesn’t burn because I once burnt a whole cherry pie. I think the stove is broke.

My teacher is a pain. She gives us homework every night. I don’t want to do homework every night. We’re starting to learn multiplying. It’s hard. When I do multiplication tables, eleven times eleven is hard. You have to multiply the first one then the second, but you have to move the numbers over a space before you add. All this work to get 122. That’s a lot of work. Do you know multiplication yet? I hate it when you have to add five numbers in a row like

132

133

134

135

534

It’s so confusing. I hope it doesn’t get any harder than that. It can’t. How much can you do with numbers? This is confusing already. All that writing in school hurts my hand. My brother has to write in cursive all the time. My teacher said we’ll start writing in cursive in January. We get a Christmas break in December. Do you get a Christmas break?

I looked on a map the other day. You are really far away. You are near an ocean too. You have Niagara Falls in New York. That looks far from Staten Island. Do you get earthquakes? We don’t. My Mother told me you get hurricanes. I don’t really know what a hurricane is. You have to tell me about New York. I’ve never seen a tornado and everyone says they have them in this state. What are your seasons like?

Your pen pal,

Cate

June 10, 1980

Dear Joe,

My school year is over. I got three A’s and three B’s on my report card. My Mom said I should get better grades. She wanted all A’s. My parents are never happy. My brother didn’t do that good. My parents spent more time talking to him about it. My teacher gave me an A in English because we still write each other. A lot of other people showed the teacher an empty envelope and tried to get away with it. I like getting your letters. You told me what baseball was like. I got to see a game on TV the other day. We beat the Jaycees. HAHA. Baseball takes so long to play, just like football. Why do players spit so much? They grab themselves when they bat. I was watching all the hand signals. I know the hand signals are codes for the batter. They pull on their ears and move their shirts when they signal. They don’t pick their nose. What if someone had an itch or they had to pick their nose and the batter thought it was a code?

It’s going to be hot today. It’s always hot here in summer. I just got a new pair of shorts. I read in the newspapers that it’s getting hot in New York too. June is when summer starts there. I guess your school is over too.

Before we left school, we all signed a big banner for the hostages in Iran. It says "Please Come Home.’ I really don’t remember when they were taken. Can you imagine being away from home for so long? I don’t even know where Iran is. My Mom says they are in little prisons and they can’t talk to each other. I can’t go the whole day without talking. My brother says no one understands me, but I like to talk. A lot of people said we should go to war over this. I’ve never been alive during a war. I saw pictures of wars and there were a lot of dead people and burned buildings. I wonder if Iran has bombs and stuff like we do. My parents say a lot of things about the President and they curse at him like my Father during football. They curse about war too. I don’t know if my parents know that I get a lot of what they are saying. 

There’s not going to be an Olympics this year. We are protesting the Russians. My parents said we might have to go to war with them too. I don’t know why we are going to all these wars. I was thinking about what I was going to do when I grow up, but why bother? We might start a war and blow the whole place up.

Since the school year is over, my teacher said we don’t have to write anymore. My friends stopped. I don’t know about us. I know you have a summer league of baseball and I have new malls. I can see if you want to stop, but I still want to write to each other. I like getting these letters (I already said that). It’s interesting to find out what it’s like a thousand miles away. It’s like you’re on another planet. Planet New York. What do you think space people look like? I think they have green heads and big eyeballs. Did you ever see a UFO? I never did. I wish one would land in my backyard. It gets so boring here during the day.

I hope you want to keep writing.

Your pen pal,

Cate

July1, 1980

Dear Cate,

I’m bored. I can’t go out because my parents want me to stay inside. Now they’re in the other room arguing about something again. It sounds like Mom spent too much money on something. I hate listening to them argue. I don’t want to watch TV. I saw all the shows already. That’s the problem with summer, no good shows on.

I hit a grand slam homer yesterday during summer league. I’m going to be a hero when school starts. I had two strikes then I hit the ball. It went over the right field fence. It kind of hurt my wrist because I hit it so hard. The ball went over everyone’s head. The kid in the outfield jumped up to get it, but he couldn’t reach it. Everyone will be talking about it all summer. We play a really bad team on Tuesday. I’m going to hit another homer then. I’ll probably bat first too.

I put the letter away for a few days and now I’m back. Same thing. I can’t go out tonight. We lost to the bad team on Tuesday. I batted third and struck out twice. I got on first base once when the shortstop dropped the ball and couldn’t throw me out. I don’t know what happened. I really wanted to hit that ball. There is another game on Tuesday. I’ll get a hit then. I have to.

The other day, my friend Bill set up the sprinklers on his lawn so we could play. It was so hot here. I stood over the sprinkler and let the water go up my shorts. It was so cold. I accidentally drank a lot of the water spraying from the sprinkler when I was running around. Jesse jumped and almost landed on the sprinkler. He didn’t break it. He missed it by an inch. He was lucky because Bill would’ve killed him.

Bill is grounded now because we made such a mess out of lawn with all the running around. I can’t see him for a week. His lawn is a real mess. It’s all mud now.

Bill’s father has a stack of nudie magazines in his basement. He keeps telling us not to go near them. We tried to pick the lock on the closet door where he keeps them. It looks so easy on TV. It didn’t work for us. I wonder why he hides them. I wouldn’t care, but now I’m interested. I don’t know why people are interested in nudity. I take a shower. I know what a naked person looks like. In school we learned about the skeleton bones and stuff, so I know what the inside of a person looks like. I don’t know what the big deal is.

Cate, we did it. I put the letter down for a week and now I’m back. We did it. Bill got us into his basement while his parents were at work. Even though he’s grounded, we still go over there. You can’t tell anyone.

I was wrong about the last paragraph. There is a difference between boys and girls. You’re missing things. It looks like a big open cut, but you don’t bleed from there. I saw this one picture, it was all red. Most of the pictures had hair there, but this one picture was gross. It was all open and she was opening it up more. It was all red and it looked like it hurt. This girl had her eyes closed and her hands were all over it. It looks like it hurt. It had to hurt. How do you pee?

There was no big deal about everything else. I have a butt so a bunch of butt pictures didn’t seem like much. I guess I’m too mature for this. My parents say people that go to nudie places in New York City aren’t mature.

I was forced to watch soap operas during the day this summer when it was raining. I think that if you kiss someone when you’re only wearing underwear, you get pregnant. Then you have a baby in four weeks. I saw it on my Mother’s soap opera. This lady was in bed in her underwear with a