Directed to the Office of the Registrar
Dear Sir or Madame,
Thank you for your quick response. However, I am very dismayed with the decision to block my application for graduation. If you will allow me, I would like to make my case for acceptance into the spring graduating class of 2009.
I am aware that on my official transcript I have a received an ‘F’ in English 315 – 17th Century Poetry. I would like to renew my petition, previously submitted to the Dean of Arts, in relation to this grade. Simply put, my Teacher’s Assistant bore a striking resemblance to my mother, a wonderful woman who, of course, barred me from ever reading anything written by a dead person for fear of conjuring their demon spirit. My act of juvenile rebellion, as well as the intricate tattooing along my calves that burn when I am disobedient, caused me a great deal of stress. My mother and I are understandably very close, raising me as she did by herself in an eight foot by eight foot shack she built with her own grit in the forgotten swamps of western Ontario. (To my surprise, many people here in Montreal have asked me how our living arrangement is possible. A learned person yourself, I’m sure you can understand when I say that simple living requires only a small wood burning stove and a five foot by three foot bed to share while we huddle waiting for our only set of clothes to dry after a hard day’s work gathering herbs and toads in the swamp). Given the high post you have achieved in your life, I feel I can safely assume that you as well have an irreversible bond with your mother. As such, I’m sure you can understand why the likeness of my own sent me running out of the exam hall, screaming and tearing at my clothes as though I were being wrung by the grim spectral hands of John Donne. Although I understand the importance this institution places on its final exams, I feel that the immediacy with which I fixed leeches on my eyelids to cry the cleansing, bloody tears of shame and submission should count for something. Perhaps a ‘C’.
As well I would like to protest the D- I received in Cultural Studies 206 on the basis that I am very uncomfortable talking about black people.
Thank you in advance,
Kyle Stevenson
P.S. Please burn this letter so that, if upon my death I am devoured by the dark worm god Moira, I will not be accidentally summoned to bring ill fortune on your heirs.
