Her handwriting was neat; it was the exaggerated print most girls had. Sometimes she focused so much on being neat and having neat handwriting, it came out looking like chicken scrawl. But when she wrote her name, it was always the same. She could have written it in Russian and it would still be the same. I loved the way she wrote my name, the way I could tell she carefully wrote down my address, as if she were copying it down, when we both knew that she had memorized it the day after I had given it to her. She didn't write my name and address the way she wrote hers. She took time with mine, purposely making it neat and perfect. With her return address, it was abbreviated and I knew she didn't even have to think as she wrote it. If she wrote it with her eyes closed, it would have come out the exact same way.
            I turned the envelope over, feeling its cold smoothness in my hand. It was thick-thicker than usual. I pushed down on the upper right hand corner, inserted my right index finger, and carefully broke the seal of the envelope. I was careful not to tear her writing; careful to open the envelope in the exact opposite way she had closed it. I flipped over the envelope before removing the letter. I looked at the stamp. LOVE, it said in strategically chosen red letters.
            I saw her as she waited in line for far too long in some stuffy run down post office in-between an obese woman who periodically complained in a loud unintelligent voice and a young Mexican woman with big scared eyes and broken English who was probably not much older than she; she was bouncing a baby girl on her hip while her 3 year old son tugged at her tattered coat. She probably waited until she could place her carefully counted change (now hot and sweaty from being in her hand for so long) on the counter and asked the underpaid federal employee for one "LOVE" stamp. Yes, that's right, only one. She probably said, her face turning a pale rose color that I loved so much….
            I shook my head and made my day dream vision of her fly out the window that lay just out of reach of my left arm. I had to get back to this assignment. I looked at the clock by my bed. 10:45 it glared.
             "Damnit." I muttered, turning back to my blank computer screen. I had to do this. I picked up the familiar page off the top of my computer.



                         Write a letter to a close friend or loved one. This letter
                         must be HANDWRITTEN. The only requirement of the
                         letter is that you must ask for a response, this is also to be
                         handwritten. Xerox both of the letters and envelopes. YOU
                         MUST TURN IN THE PHOTOCOPIES WITH YOUR
                         PAPER. When you receive your response, DO NOT READ
                         IT. First, look at the handwriting and in the first section of
                         your paper; write a two-page analysis of the handwriting,
                         explaining the content of the letter. Then, read the letter
                         and discuss in two pages the actual content of the paper.
                         This is to be your second section. In your third section,
                         compare and contrast your previous two sections, in two
                         pages. Where were you wrong? Why were you wrong?
                         All papers are due on my desk by 12 PM, January 15th.


            Grabbing her letter, I got up and left the room, praying the new air would clear my mind. I walked down to the end of the hall and then down two flights of stairs and through another maze of halls before I reached the photocopier. I photocopied her letter and the envelope and returned to my room. At least I have one part done. I thought sarcastically. My watch beeped. 11 PM. 13 hours left to save my Pysch grade, I thought sullenly.
            I forced myself to sit down and look at her letter. I removed my glasses, since I knew that would prevent my urge to read the letter before I analyzed it. I brought it closer to my face so my nose could detect a faint hint of her smell. I smiled, and found another vision of her creeping into my head.
            She was sitting at her desk, the old wooden one her father used to have down in the den, when he used to work at home. She sat there in her old rolling chair that used to be in front of her computer, writing to me. She was nervous for some reason; she was probably waiting for someone to come take her to the mall, even though she had her driver's license. She turned her hips back and forth in the chair, twisting left to right and back again. Or maybe she was sprawled out on her bed, pausing in-between thoughts to chew on the top of her pen…
            I smacked myself on the head. I knew that she was going to keep distracting me, and there was something I had to do about it. Maybe a nap, I thought, but dismissed that thought once I saw that it was already 11:17. Time was burning away faster than I thought. I unfolded the letter, surprised to notice that it was about four pages long, and started to take in the handwriting. It started out as it normally did, with large and precise letters. I took a pen that was lying on the floor and scrawled on the notepad sitting next to my computer "starts out-formal, generic." I stared at the last word. Generic didn't seem fitting in the description of her. I put that aside, deciding that all letters are generic to begin with. They all say "Hi, how are you, I'm fine…." blah, blah, blah. So of course it would be generic. I studied the handwriting further. I paused, noticing smudged handwriting; her ink was smeared over the edge of the page. Tears, was my immediate thought. But why would she be crying? I wondered. An image of her weeping over me, missing me so terribly much popped into my head.
             "AARRGGHHH!" I screamed. "This is ridiculous. Read the damn letter, Eric. Come on now, you can do this."


            1 AM found me on the last full page of her letter. I made another note on the third page of my yellow writing tablet. "Towards the end starts to get hurried-running out of time? Rushed thoughts? Frantic? Upset?" I put her letter down for a moment, wondering about what I had just observed.
             "What could that mean?" I muttered to the empty room. I looked at my notes, and at the pages of her letter that I had already analyzed. "Come on Lees, talk to me….What were you thinking when you wrote this, Lisa? What went through your head?…….This is futile! Talking to a paper isn't gonna save my Pysch grade…..but neither is talking to myself…..that'll only get me locked up…..but hey, I'd get my extension…." I laughed despite myself. I'm a total nut case. I decided.
            I tried to analyze a little more without trying to read the letter, and I just started getting worried about my last observation. Why might she be upset? I pondered, but the answer was already in my head before I finished my question. I shook my head violently, as if to make the idea go away. "No, no, no, no, no!" I shouted. "This is ridiculous. I can't analyze my girlfriend!" I exclaimed, throwing the letter to the ground. Is it you can't or is it that you're afraid? Afraid of what you might see or might find? "Damn Freud." I muttered.



            I finished typing my analysis of her letter. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. 2:49 it said. Sighing, I got up, went into the bathroom, and plunged my head into a basin full of ice water. Shivering, I stood upright and rubbed my face dry with the paper towels from the dispensers that hung on the wall.