Rachelle’s nephews, William and Sammy are aged 7 and 5. We think that they’re brilliant, and routinely send them postcards from various fictional characters. They always respond, dictating a letter to their mother, and then decorating it with stickers. This is a letter that Sammy, the youngest boy, sent to us in response to one we sent to him from the famous pirates Bluebeard and Captain Jack Sparrow.
Dear Bluebeard and Jack,
This is pirate Sam. You look like a girl man, Jack. Jack Sparrow, I think you have a bad guy on your ship and I hope you get him and find him. You should sword fight him. I hope the bad guy loses.
Bluebeard, we are going to wreck the closet with real swords. But they are really pretend swords. Then we are going to eat octopus wings, worms, clams and for dessert, we are going to eat scorpions.
We are going to the mountains to find treasure. The map is here. But we aren’t going to go too fast, because you know what happens when you go too fast. You will go slow. And so you need to go fast and slow, fast and slow. Then you will find the treasure in the mountains.
Please come join me and play with me. The mountain is really a monster. You should fight it with your swords. I will see you there, but only a minute. I think you could fight with 2 swords.
Love pirate Samuel.
I can show you how to make money.
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It was Sammy’s birthday yesterday, and as a gift we bought him a costume, an orange jumpsuit that could either be an astronaut suit or an inmate’s uniform. This is the letter that we sent to him to accompany the present. I cannot wait to get the response.
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Sammy:
This is the true story of the authentic 1969 replica prison jumpsuit that belonged to Haywood ““Smokey” Beansgarden, that we have given to you for your birthday. At first glance, it might look like an astronaut suit, but this is not the case.
Haywood Beansgarden was a master criminal and imposter. He was not born mean, as many have thought, but was born small, growing to be no more than the size of a five year-old boy. Because of this, people were always assuming he was a kid, and were telling him what he could and could not do. Finally, on Haywood’s 30th birthday, he got sick of it, and started to steal from everybody who told him what to do. He found that his small size and innocent appearance made it easy for him to sneak around and gain the trust of those around him.
By the time he was 32, he had amassed a fortune of nearly a million billion dollars, but Haywood didn’t care about money. He just wanted respect, and so he ran for office, hoping to become mayor of Miami, Florida. Unfortunately, Haywood tried to use his money to buy the votes of the people of the city, and he was caught and imprisoned for fraud and bribery. It was in jail in Florida, where he worked on Alligator detail in the swamps of the everglades, that he wore the prison jump suit that you have before you.
One night, sick of having to clean Alligator teeth again, he made a break for it. He spent two days slogging through the swap, battling insects and alligators and man-eating flora. It is rumoured that he survived on a diet of butterflies. When he emerged from the swamps, he found himself in a place called Cape Canaveral, which was home to the United States Space Program.
Knowing that the police were looking for him, he thought quickly, and sewed on some astronaut insignia on his prison jump suit, explaining that he was a tiny astronaut who was going to the moon in order to test the effects of gravity on children. And so he went on board Apollo 11, and landed on the moon, at the Sea of Tranquility. When the spacecraft returned to Earth and splashed down in the great blue ocean, Haywood was nowhere to be found, and to this day, his whereabouts, and the origins of his nickname “Smokey” are unknown.