Life Appreciated: the TRUE adventures of flat stanley

I was cleaning my office this weekend and came across a letter from my girlfriend Laurel. Last year in Ellie's class they participated in the 'Flat Stanley' project. Flat Stanley is a little boy that the kids draw and cut out and then he is mailed to someone who takes Stanley around to new places and photographs him having life experiences. It's an opportunity for first graders to learn about new places and correspond with someone through mail.

So Ellie created her flat Stanley and decided to send him to Connecticut to one of her favorite people, my girlfriend Laurel. Laurel is so creative and fun that I knew she would jump at the chance to do exciting things with Stanley and share that adventure with Ellie. And she definitely did. She mailed a great set of photos with Stanley having all wonderful New England adventures. Ellie was very thrilled to bring the report back to school.

Little did Ellie know that also in the envelope from Flat Stanley was a letter addressed to me. You see, Flat Stanley seems to have a darker side to him and Laurel wanted to warn me about it. Here is the letter and photos she sent to me. Totally cracked me up when I found them the other day.

Dear Colleen-

I wanted to let you know what really happened when Flat Stanley came up for a visit. To tell you the truth, I was saddened and shocked as I had only heard good things about him in the past.

My first warning should have been when we had a fire in the fire pit his first night here. What a pyro!! He kept taunting us, getting really close to the fire and threatening to put his hand in it. I could not even imagine trying to explain to poor Ellie that he had burned himself up...intentionally!!

The next day, when I brought Flat Stanley to work, I had to really keep and eye on him. At one point he disappeared and after looking ALL OVER for him, I found him in the back alley with the smokers, just puffing away. He had already gone through a whole pack of cigarettes - he just kept bumming them off of people. Man, did he reek of smoke for the rest of the day. I had to hose him down with Glade when we got home. Even after that he would sneak up on the cats and make them sneeze with the strong odor of Glade that followed him around.

One night Tony and I went out to dinner and when we returned home we discovered he helped himself to the beer in the fridge. He was toasted! He couldn't even stand up and I had to stay up with him half the night in the bathroom. NOT a very good houseguest!

The last straw was when he stole the neighbor's car one night and went joy riding. Unfortunately the cops caught up with him and threw him in the slammer. We let him stay the night in jail with hope it would teach him a lesson. When we went to bail him out the next day, he was in the jail yard yelling sarcastically at us from behind the bars, mad as hell that we left him there as long as we did.

I was all too happy to send him on his merry way. I just wanted you to know the real Flat Stanley so you could monitor him around Ellie. She is so sweet and I would hate for him to be a bad influence on her. Just be careful.

By the way, he also eats out of the litter box....

wow...that Stanley sure is bad news! He is going to need to kick this dirty habit!