College Student Confessions

Dear Mother and Dad:

It has now been three months since I left for college. I have
been remiss in writing and am very sorry for my
thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will bring you
up-to-date now, but before you read on, please sit down. You
are not to read any further unless you are sitting down...

Okay???

Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull
fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out of the
window of my dormitory when it caught fire shortly after my
arrival, are pretty well healed now. I only spent two weeks in
the hospital and now I can see almost normally and only get
three headaches a day.

Fortunately the fire in the dormitory and my jump were
witnessed by an attendant at the gas station near the dorm and
he was the one who called the Fire Department and the
ambulance. He also visited me at the hospital, and since I had
nowhere to live because of the burnt-out dorm, he was kind
enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It's really
a basement room, but it is kind of cute.

He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply in love and
are planning to get married. We haven't set the exact date yet,
but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show. Yes,
Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are
looking forward to being grandparents and I know you will
welcome the baby and give it the same love and devotion and
tender care you gave me when I was a child.

The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend
has some minor infection which prevents us from passing our
premarital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from him. This
will soon clear up with the penicillin injections we are taking
daily. I know you will welcome him into our family with open
arms. He is kind, and, although not well educated, he is
ambitious. Although he is of a different race and religion than
ours, I know your expressed tolerance will not permit you to
be bothered by these facts. I am sure you will love him as I do.
His family background is good, too, for I am told that his
father is an important gun bearer in the village from which he
comes.

Now that I have brought you up-to-date, I want to tell you that
there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or
skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I
am not engaged, and I do not have syphilis...

However, I am getting a "D" in history and an "F" in biology,
and I wanted you to see these marks in the proper perspective.

Your loving daughter,

Charlene