Letter #5

Dear Lydia,

I’m sorry for what transpired last night. It was a subconscious response, a Pavlovian response from a life I once lived. A darker life, filled with secrecy, devotion, and betrayal. You see, I am writing to you today to tell you everything. You’ve told me everything about your family, your past relationships, your medical acronyms, and your peculiar fascination with pugs. In fact, you’ve told me so much that I hardly had a chance to tell you anything about myself. Not one thing, besides my name. However, under the circumstances, I’ll skip the me of now and start with the life I thought I left behind.

You see, I was brought up as a weapon, a child weapon. My father trained us as adolescent agents to assassinate Mr. Eisner, the head of an evil empire. Our training ranged from creating throwing stars out of paper to make shift projectile launchers out of the ends of simple clicking pens. We were armed with sophisticated electronic systems, such as the “Four Point Decider”. Constructed of paper, you recite your question in the form of a rhyme opening and closing the squares as each syllable passes. Once complete, you choose one of the four triangles inside revealing your next course of action. Sometimes I would get “Kiss Tammy” which I didn’t understand, but I guess had to do with the cooties virus I was about inherit. Physical training involved a daily routine of surviving the “gauntlet”. This system included climbing up a set of spiral stairs to the top of the tower, traversing across a set of bars using nothing but our hands while dangling in the air with no safety lines, surviving a straight slide down to the sand pit, followed by a our fastest sprint through the unforgiving terrain, to finally ending in a body slide on top of slippery tarp imitating natures annoying weather condition, rain. This, I say with all modesty, we’ve done at least 3 times a night. I’m surprised that neither me, nor my siblings ever perished through this course. In fact, we’ve worn the course down through the years with our pure tenacity and discipline; not from the fact it was made of plastic and that, as adolescents, we shouldn’t be playing on it. No, it was from our pure training. Our survival training involved weekends where our dad sent us off in the woods to live among the wild. We learned which plants were edible, which animals we dangerous, and even which trees make the best scouting positions. We’d be out for hours, sometimes a whole day. Our ninja hiding skills were so great my father had to send in the government agents to even find us, the Griffith Park Park Rangers. Yes, I can’t help but to laugh too, what a stupid name. If I were a super agent I’d give myself a more foreboding name.

Combat training were the most demanding. We must have spent hours training our bodies to mimic the lethal prowess of the Power Rangers, yes, that’s a more foreboding name. What says power more than the actual word, “Power”. Occasionally, there were times my siblings and I were engaged in hand to hand combat. The only means to an end would be a submission hold with the loser calling out a family member’s title, though it was always “uncle” and never “grandma” or “second cousin in law”. The worse was the torture training. It was always done unexpectedly to keep us on our guards. Everything from wet willies to Indian burns were conducted at random times of the day, even during sleep! We had to make sure we never let anyone know our primary target or the agency we worked for, so enduring this was essential to our cause. One time I almost gave in during a thirty minute purple nurple, but with gritted teeth and tearing eyes, I was able to withstand enough for my mom to walk in and stop the torture. My mom wasn’t part of the program not was she ever to find out about D.E.D. “Die Eisner Die”.

It didn’t stop there. Psychological training was also necessary. We HAD to know our enemy, so every night we would watch his propaganda on the Disney networks and purchase his paraphernalia from the stores. We stuck to our core beliefs and chanted “Down with Eisner” after each show as we blew up the items with our explosives. Yes, we had explosives. This was the turning point though. “Explosives?” I thought. “Have we gone too far?” I believed we did. Mutiny was the only answer.

Time for planning. The explosives were kept by my father, hidden in a location only he knew about. We would have to search the whole house or get it out of my father some way some how. Oh how I was torn to use my training against my own teacher. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, I would need help from my siblings, and especially Bobby with his inescapable purple nurple technique (I believe it’s in his uncut nails). With all of us on one team, we would be unstoppable. We’ll need a distraction for our mother to keep her away, maybe some loud noise to cover the screams. Every step I planned, my heart sank even deeper. Th purple nurple would have to be saved for the end. It was just too cruel. It would have to start with the loogy drip followed by variations of the torture techniques we learned. Days went by until finally we had our routine and getaway planned.

Fate must have decided to be good to us, because on the day of the betrayal, Mr. Eisner stepped down from his position. I couldn’t tell what I felt, relief that the torture was avoided or grief that all the planning went to waste. As what I can fathom as celebration, my father lit the firecrackers from his locked box on the street. How fortunate this day was. We stood there at the door way and watch my father and mother in embrace. I watched as my father leaned over to my mother and say under his breath “Finally that bastard is gone, maybe I can get my job back.” From that day, it appeared my training had stopped and the killing machine of me needed to find a new meaning.

I know this may be confusing to you, because you were talking about Escher when I subconsciously punched you in the throat, but my mind mistakenly heard Eisner. On the bright side, if it were the younger me, your may have been in mortal danger, but thank goodness it’s been a few years and my strength wasn’t what it used to be.

So.. with that cleared up, let’s have another date. How about Quiznos tomorrow night. All the Sammies you want. Seriously. On me this time!

Tags: assassin, disney, eisner, father, griffith park, lost job, mother, parents, pavlovian, purple nurple, rangers, secret life