Dear Penpal:

I have been reading your dispatches with quite some interest (though I can't figure out exactly how much without looking at the thermometer). Your adventures remind me of the escapades of my own youth. It's true I've led a sedentary life these past 35 years, but my first year on this earth was full of zany frolics sure to inspire any reader to go outside and get some fresh air.

When I was two months old I set out in search of my own Encylopedie Larousse, having worn my old Brittanica into a dog-eared, endpaper-stained mess through heavy use. I wanted a Larousse now so as to have something a little more festive to wear at parties.

And so I purchased two steamer tickets for New York. (I was only one passenger, but I figured you never know when you might fall in love). The problem of how I expected to get from Pittsburgh to New York via steamer (across landlocked Pennsylvania) had not occurred to me -- after all, I was only two months old.

Once I arrived in New York (I shan't bore you with the details of how I actually made the trip, though perhaps you would have been entertained by my account of the flying bowling alley), I set out in search of the French Dictionary store (Manhattan branch). But wouldn't you know it! -- they were closed for lunch. So instead I secured a starring role for myself in a Broadway musical based on the life of Horace Streudel, a fetus whose mother miscarried early in her pregnancy. The parents went on to successfully conceive again, but Horace's story was a brief one and did not charm the critics. So there I was, 2 1/2 months old, with one Broadway flop under my belt and struggling under the burden of typecasting. Clearly, it was time to consider a change of career.