I attended a semi private High School. The school contracted with local towns to teach their students and received many donations from alumni. I received a decent education that was greatly supplemented by having 2 really intelligent well read parents.  

Lately the letters requesting donations have really gotten to me. Crawl under my skin and tick me off gotten to me.

Now, they initially got my address by sending a letter to my parent’s house with my name on it while I had an address forward in place. Instead of forwarding the letter the post office returns it with the new address stuck to the envelope. Voila! My high school alumni association had my address. I would NOT have chosen to give them my address.

When I moved from the area where I grew up I left things behind.  When I started to get the letters and publications I hadn’t been in touch with anyone for nearly 10 years. The first publication arrived with an envelope and email with a request to “update us on your status.” I dutifully emailed in a brief blurb about how my partner and I had recently moved to lovely Beverly, MA. Blah blah blah.

They never published it.

You see the woman in charge of the status updates for the publication is a Baptist bible beater who doesn’t believe in “the gays.” I knew when I sent the update in it stood little chance of reaching publication.*

After it wasn’t published I sent several requests to be removed from the mailing list. To no avail. I STILL receive the quarterly magazine and the bimonthly emails begging me for donations.

This last letter was over the top. I will donate money when the “head of school” #1 learns how to write a letter that isn’t filled with redundancy or  #2 hires an assistant with an English degree that isn’t from UMM.

First off letters begging me for money should be cliché free. Secondly let’s not be redundant, a white marking board is a white board in every part of the world except East Machias, ME. The 40 Chairs for student center, about which the entire letter was about, could have simply been written as “40 Chairs.” The “78 Student Classroom Chairs” could have  been “78 chairs for classrooms,”  unless they are chairs for elephants there is no reason to state they are student chairs. With so much detail lavished upon the chair situation I was distraught to find to requests for “tables” and “oak tables.” Dear god, where are these going?  Who are they for?

Perhaps when Washington Academy hires a “Headmaster” and is bigotry free I’ll donate. We all know that will happen when hell freezes over.

*A big part of who I am centers around the fact that I’m gay, let’s face it; my life is filtered through that lens, but I’m able to understand that OTHERS have different views. I don’t censor them on it.  I’m also an atheist and a liberal. When someone tells me they are from the Westboro Baptist Church I let their actions speak before I judge them on it. One might think the Baptist Bible Beater who runs the alumni association could do the same.