fun fact about me: When I was 6 years old I sent so much hate mail to the president (the second Bush) that the mail carrier had to tell my mom I needed to stop before we got FBI’d
I was COMPLETELY unaware of the US political scene or why the adults in my life hated Bush, but I knew I hated him because he let people shoot wolves from helicopters and that’s mean and shitty
I also had a poor grasp on how stamps worked, so given that I wasn’t allowed to continually throw money away by putting stamps on my presidential hate mail, a lot of the times I just drew squares with little pictures inside on the corner.
Love, love, love reading more proof that everyone should encourage the children in their lives to write to elected officials--it teaches them about citizenship and can also be very funny.
When I taught second grade, one of the options for students who had finished their work was to write a letter to the president. I would send all of the letters in a big envelope at the end of every month.
Watching my students get more and more frustrated with him (and concerned about his wellbeing) was not the result I'd hoped for when I came up with the idea, but it was kind of hilarious.
See, Obama had a standard packet with information and activities about his dog he'd send in response to letters from very young citizens...and of course his office sent one back to our class every single time we sent mail.
So eventually all of the letters looked something like this:
Dear President Obama, I am writing about the environment. I am sad that the Great Barrier Reef is hurt. Also the Amazon Rainforest. Can you help? PLEASE DON'T WRITE BACK TO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DOG AGAIN. WE ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT BO. WE COMPLETED THE MAZE AND COLORED HIM IN. It is good that you love your pet a lot. But try to remember the environment. It is also important.
I often forget about snail mail. What do you think the White House would do if someone sent them letters in dead languages? Or codes they can't translate easily? Would that get you on a hit list? I would so badly like to send the president "I hate you" in Akkadian cuneiform via snail mail, but I'd definitely be afraid of getting in trouble. Maybe I could put someone else's name and a random address as the return. Then some random Wendy's in California would randomly be getting weird mail back from the government addressed to a guy named Joe Mama who doesn't even work there. I mean, I've sent stuff to people before anonymously by putting their address as the address and return address. Oooooo ideas. What if people wrote letters to the president, FROM the president, filled with stupid memes. Like not memes about him. But like, memes about random fandoms he won't understand. But the general vibe is Character A hates Character B. And that's clearly a metaphor. One of these days I will get around to sending snail mail to the government that's just like one of those stupid old school chain letters except it's in Akkadian cuneiform and filled with dumb memes.
