These are the text messages my wife sent to me the other day:

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Rachelle: How’s the pulmonary rehab going, my love?

Rachelle: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that you’re dominating the warm-up exercises!

Rachelle: Yes, you are a natural leader, it’s one hundred percent true!

Rachelle: What’s The Flower Pot?

Rachelle: I see.

Rachelle: So you sit in a chair, and then move one of your legs as if you were lifting it over a flower pot?

Rachelle: What a strange name for an exercise!

Rachelle: Well, I don’t know. Maybe something a little more macho, something like The Grizzly Stomp or The Sumo Crush.

Rachelle: I like The Grizzly Stomp, too. You should write that down and put it in the Suggestion Box.

Rachelle: You already suggested a Cosplay night! Interesting idea, Pickle, but aren’t all the other residents elderly?

Rachelle: I see, that’s good thinking on your part, you can make your oxygen tanks look like rocket packs!

Rachelle: You are very creative, it’s true, and as you say, you are the Wayne Gretzky of The Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Really? The physiotherapist asked you to lead the class yesterday?! How flattering!

Rachelle: Yes, I am sure it was a great honour that everybody else was bitterly jealous of! I’m curious, did you get to choose the music for the work-out?

Rachelle: That’s great! Who did you pick?

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: Well, it just seems like an odd choice.

Rachelle: I didn’t know, Tori Amos just seems weird to me. Complicated, annoying.

Rachelle: Sorry. I am trying to encourage and support you, my love.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: Right in the middle of the stretch she said you had a very small flower pot?!

Rachelle: OMG, That’s hilarious!

Rachelle: I mean nasty, just nasty.

Rachelle: 90 is old, and aging can make people mean.

Rachelle: You’re probably right, that smart-alecky Yvette lady likely had dementia.

Rachelle: Because it’s not your class, honey.

Rachelle: That’s why they wouldn’t let you “expel her from your program.”

Rachelle: Well, I’m glad you put her on notice, anyway, and sorry that everybody is now calling you The Little Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Think of it being like Dear Leader, a term of respect and fear.

Rachelle: Well of course I miss you terribly, but I’m struggling along. Even had a little party last night to fight the loneliness.

Rachelle: Probably less than 25 people, I don’t remember.

Rachelle: He might have been there, not positive.

Rachelle: Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this!

Rachelle: He brought his Porsche over the other day to take Jones for a ride, and Jones just loved it! I’ve never seen him happier! It’s astonishing Pierre doesn’t have any kids because he is just SO amazing with them!!

Rachelle: Yes, you’re amazing with Jones, too.

Rachelle: Sure Jones misses you.

Rachelle: Well, he’s still not really talking yet, so he missing you in a kind of subconscious way, I guess, but I can tell that he really does miss you!!

Rachelle: Tonight?

Rachelle: Oh, Steve needed to take somebody to the magazine awards at some fancy hotel and Jen is out of town, so I have to go as his date. Barf.

Rachelle: He was nominated in two different comedy writing categories.

Rachelle: It is a shame none of your work was nominated!

Rachelle: No, I have no idea why Steve won’t accept your Facebook friendship.

Rachelle: The world is mysterious.

Rachelle: Never mind that though, what are you up to tonight, my Little Flower Pot?

Rachelle: Fish stick night! Yum!

Rachelle: You’re my favourite fish stick, you know.

Rachelle: It’s true.

Rachelle: Don’t ever doubt that!

Rachelle: You will always be my favourite fish stick! xo

Dear Queen Elizabeth II:

Happy birthday!!!

I just want to say that you look absolutely fantastic for 88! Really, I could see in the photograph that your skin was just glowing so I really want to congratulate you on that. I had my passport photograph taken yesterday, after only a five year interval, and I’m very sorry to say that I looked asymmetrical, angry and jaundiced, like a hard drinking 68 year-old. Really, I looked like I live in Russia or something, and I don’t!

I’m actually from Canada, so I’m one of your subjects, and when I was a boy I used to collect stamps with you on them. There must have been hundreds of them, and they all looked pretty much alike—you, looking regal in front of some aspect of Canadian industry.

None of them were valuable for collectors as so many were printed and used to mail letters. (You remember mailing letters, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you always had a fancy butler to mail them for you and put the stamp on the envelope, otherwise I guess it would have been pretty weird to put a stamp of yourself on the envelope. That’s the sort of thing that could go to a person’s head, I think.) At any rate, they were everyday stamps, the sort that filled the pages between the cool ones of Grizzly Bears or hockey players, but every once in awhile for a special occasion they’d put out a stamp of you that was practically the size of a hockey card. It would be either silver or gold and it was like finding a jewel. Suddenly, we got to see you in all your majesty, if that makes any sense.

Everybody has regrets, but I imagine a queen might have more than most. You were locked into a very particular life from the time you were born and you must always wonder about that boy you thought cute way back when, or what it would have been like to have been a hippy and get high with a Beatle. What would you say your biggest regret is?

I regret never learning how to fire a gun.

And if you could sleep with either Colin Firth or Russell Brand, which one would you choose?

Don’t be shy, it’s your birthday.

Michael Murray

PS: Is Gwyneth Paltrow really British?

You’re malevolent, like the sort of thing a Super Villain might keep in his utility belt.

When I bought you I thought of the aroma of pumpkin pie, I thought of the gentle touch of a mother, a soft and restorative healing force, but what I received was more like a radioactive explosion. What the fuck are you?!!

You gave me a THIRD degree burn!

That’s the Grizzly Bear of burns! Doctors and nurses were peeling back the bandage and looking at it like it was Two Girls One Cup! And these were medical professionals!

You FUCKER!

Your stupid blue, felt cover, which instantly pills– as if it was some fucking Blow Fish– just falls off like so much flesh from a THIRD DEGREE burn! It’s useless, nothing more than a deception! You would need to be encased in a one-foot thick case of lead—like a coffin—to protect your victims from your deadly Superheat Technology! What, were you some crazy experiment that the Soviets abandoned because it was too dangerous? I am thinking that you were, you bitch.

And listen Death Pad, I was using you exactly as you were designed and as I was instructed to use you. Was it my fault that I fell asleep while watching that excruciatingly boring movie about whales and that your Deception Cover vanished? No, it was not my fault! It was my misfortune! And then vulnerable while asleep, you heat raped me. You burned a fucking hole in my side! I thought I was having a nightmare about global warming, but no, when I was living a nightmare starring you, the evil kill pad!

My therapist tells me a have an abundance of displaced anger and that it’s up to me how I use it. I choose to use it to kill Super Villains.

I am coming after you, you cocksucker, and I am going to set you on goddamn fire. You will also have to pay me forty million dollars or something, because this fucking burn is disgusting and it kills. In fact, the pain is so great that I am now completely addicted to Percocet, which is the only reason this entire letter isn’t written in capitals.

Watch your back, motherfucker.

Michael Murray