There once was a girl named Pandora, who was gifted with
wit and intelligence, yet had patience and perseverance as well. She was envied
by so many, more than she ever realized. One day, soon after her sixteenth
birthday, she was given a gift: a mailbox key, and as her mother handed her the
key, she warned: never ever open the box. Yet, curious as she was, Pandora could not resist the thought of what could be in the mailbox. Was it for her? Another gift, or a letter that held some information, not yet captured in all of the
books in the libraries of the world? One afternoon, when she could stand it no
longer, she waited until her parents were not home and walked to the mailbox,
key in hand. She had thought so much of what was in the box; she had not
considered what would be the consequences, or what her parents would do. Slowly,
Pandora inserted the key, and felt it turn as each tumbler of the lock fell
into place. When she opened the mailbox, it was not a package filled with
jewels or money; but instead it was every anxiety that could be thought of, and
every single thought that kept a person up at night. As she opened the small
metal door, they began flooding out: college invite after glossy college invite,
ads for roof repair printed on thin newsprint, letters addressed to people who
weren't her, and bills, endless bills. While the plain yet menacing envelopes
with “your statement is enclosed” came on specific schedules, the letters from
colleges would come daily, from places that she hadn’t even thought about in
her relatively few years on earth. The worry about the future burned inside of
her head, and flooded the local high school. When her mother returned from work
that evening, she found Pandora sitting on the kitchen floor, shaking and
surrounded by stacks of envelopes, what she could carry from the mailbox; her
mother knew without asking what Pandora had done. Later that night, they went
to the mailbox and opened it together, for there was no point in worrying now that
its evils had been released to Pandora’s world. At the back of the mailbox was a
small envelope, with a folded sheet of pastel printer paper inside. Familiar handwriting
in dark blue pen covered the page, and a soft feeling spread through her as she
read the letter from a far-off friend: hope.
Among the evils I’d like to squelch:
Crowded hallways, soup that burns and sticks to the bottom
of the pot and is impossible to scrub off, corrupted audio files, the wastefulness
of mass-mailing lists from colleges, nightmares where I have crooked teeth
again and have to endure another four years or braces and oral surgery, the
fact that the College Board calls themselves “nonprofit”, the fact that time is finite, and the erasure of bi, ace and pan people the in LGBTQ community.
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