Cliché Central

Freshman year. French 1, 7th block. Halfway through the year, Mr. Peterka gave us all the option to buy our own pen pals from foreign countries. I thought to myself, hmmm, I might be interested in buying a nice Italian girl, so that’s exactly what I did. She was only $1, a bargain in my opinion. A few weeks later, Mr. Peterka gave us little slips of paper that had the pen pal’s name on it. My pen pal was a girl named Nadia Lazzaris, from Italy, and it gave her address (which is hard to write out because it has fractions and a bunch of stuff in it). After I got the address I sat down that night and penned a letter to my pen pal. Nothing extraordinary but, you know, enough to get the message across. I sent it and waited for about a week or two, hoping to get a response, when finally, the day of the North High basketball game at North (I don’t know how I remember that), I got a letter back from her. I think that I lost that initial letter, because i can’t find it anywhere around my house, but I remember that she was very excited to have an American pen pal to talk to. I think it was around Christmas time when I sent her my second letter, so I decided to send her something for Christmas. I thought it would be kinda tight if I sent her a Kapaun t-shirt because then she could represent KMC in another country! After I got the shirt at the spirit store, I went to the post office and sent it. I was really shocked when they told me it would cost $20 to send that shirt over there! That’s a lot for postage! I paid it, reluctantly. She had better be wearing that t-shirt.

I do still have her second letter back, however. She wrote it on graph paper, like usual, and here’s a transcript of that letter:

“Dear Mattew, how are you? I’m ok! How did you spend your Christmas holiday? I stayed at home. What did you receieved? I receieved a new mobile, a coat, some T-shirts etc. :)! What did you do at New Year’s Eve? I stayed at home with mine and we waited for midnight :). I write you my e-mail address and my numbers (I don’t remember if I’ve written them in the last letter).

E-MAIL - (withheld)

HOME - (withheld)

MOBILE - (withheld)

You’ve said me, you like & play tennis. I like & play too. In April I with my mother will go to Monte-Carlo (France) to see the tournement. I hope to hear and receive your letter soon :). I’d like to have a new friend… & you?

I HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU SOON! SINCERELY Nadia.”

So now I’ve got all of my pen pal’s contacts, which are each like 20 digits long. I was considering calling her for a while because I’ve never called anyone overseas before, but then I realized it was gonna be costing me almost $2 a minute to do that! I also get a bunch of pictures of her and of her with friends, etc. I’ve got a very friendly pen pal! She’s got actually quite an interesting life. Her dad is a bus driver and her mom stays at home, I get the drift. One interesting thing is that I would always allude to her going to high school but she never told me she went to high school! She studies like 5 languages in the first place (English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian I believe), though she always writes me in English, I could understand French if she wanted, but no! Oh well, I am amused by her English phrases and whatnot. It’s actually pretty good! Anyway, I digress. I responded to her, telling her of my new job and of my tennis playing. And for a while there we had a healthy pen pal relationship, but over time my writing to her slowly decreased, while she kept writing me regularly, occasionally sending a gift or two (a snowglobe, bracelet, a Monte Carlo keychain that I currently have on my keyring, etc). I started to feel bad, because she was still putting effort into our “relationship” while I was starting to grow out of it, so for Christmas last year I wrote her and gave her a Christmas gift, a bracelet from American Eagle, that actually said “American Eagle” on the bead, because then she would be the coolest Italian girl over there cuz she’s got an American bracelet, right? I hope she’s wearing that bracelet along with the Kapaun shirt I gave her, they would work so well together! Occasionally I still get postcards from her, but usually nowadays the communication is restricted to these postcards. I want to keep writing her but I never work up the effort to write her, so imma be dedicatin’ this tumblr post to her, wherever you are Nadia this is for you! I wouldn’t be surprised if you found it though haha anyway! Maybe when we grow up we’ll meet each other in a subway terminal one day and be like, pen pal?