LITERARY AUTOPILOT

Hi. I’m Muffy. I'm young and gorgeous but lonely. Please write to me!
miffedmuffy23@hotmail.com.

Dear Miss Muffy:

My name is Edna Appleby, from Topeka, Kansas. My granddaughter, Dotty, bless her heart, gave me that Reader’s Digest with your note in it because she knows how much I love Reader’s Digest, dear. She herself never reads it because she’s a fashion designer in Los Angeles. I’m much older than you, I suspect, and I’m very, very concerned you might be slipping this contact information in other magazines and it will fall into the hands of an ax murderer, one with brains enough to figure out where you live. And I know all about ax murderers because Elmo, my uncle by marriage to my sister who never had any sense, was one. He done killed six women in a farm outside of Topeka in the space of they say three minutes, including my sister and her bingo friends, because he was a very big horribly strong man with a vile temper and no control at all and ugly as a dung beetle to boot. And they fried him, thank the Lord, so he’s been getting his just deserts for years.

You’re a very lucky young lady, Miss Muffy. I just got this Web TV thing in the mail from my grandson Bobby and my naybor's son Billy teached me how to use it and I’m having so much fun. Just imagine yesterday I found one of my elementry school classmates what lives in Baton Rouge and she writes me all about little Joey Figs, what used to be class clown, so she tells me all about how he’s been indicated for securities fraud. You never can tell about people I always say which is what you should always be bearing in mind, dear, because the world is full of all sorts of terrible people and I don’t know why but the Lord has a reason for everything. Amen.

Now my husband, Willy, who passed away five summers ago, bless his heart, was a good man and he worked hard while the babies came bursting out of me like little popovers. We fed those babies and I took a job in the tire factory and they all growed up in good health except for two who was stillborn. And except for Elmo and my nasty drunk daddy, I can’t really say I got too many complaints about my life because I was very very careful to never get mixed up with dangerous mean fruitcakes so now I’m ripe as an apple what's already fallen from a tree, but a little bored but don’t you be telling anyone that.

Maybe you’d like to correspond and make a lonely old lady like me happy because the kids and the grandkids don’t write or visit much because they’re very busy and to tell the truth they try not to speak to me probably because I lost most of my hearing and had to get a hysterectomy, and then decided to go for a sex change, you know life is a bitch when you’re a woman. Anyways, I look forward to finding out where you live and what you do and whatever else you want to tell me.

Sincerely,

Edna