My Dear Cousin - Walking Pony Girl

22^nd  May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

Every time I write you now I go over the letters that I wrote and now and then a memory comes up of an interesting anecdote. Back around the tenth and eleventh I talked about losing my job. One of the windfalls of that was that I started walking with (Pony Girl).

(Pony Girl) had been diagnosed with hemorrhoids and walking got her business moving. Every now and then she would need to take off running to use the restroom. It’s a thing I can laugh at now, but it made a positive impact on her health.

I do recall that people were telling her that she looked thinner, but that she didn’t lose weight. In truth, had I followed this up with good diet I would have changed her life, but I was still ill myself and knew little about health.

We took the same walk we used to when going to grade school. The school is about a half mile from the house, and there are two ways of getting there from where I live. One way you walk up and down a hill and the other is flat land. We would go there on the flat way and come back by the hill. One night we did this ten times. (Pony Girl) even tried to get her girlfriend walking but she wasn’t much of a walking partner.

The telling event that came from this is when I talked about changing jobs. I didn’t want to go back to security. The only thing that really brought me joy back in high school was theater and I mentioned that I wanted to go into acting.

This really pissed off (Pony Girl) and she started by screaming at me that I wouldn’t get any overtime working as an actor. This is actually not true, but you normally don’t work at night as an actor. I could have done it for extra money but not as a job.

(Pony Girl), however, demanded we stop talking about it she was so mad. Mind you I had just put her up for two years as she finished college and she was refusing to pay me back.

Looking back I think this was very telling of how she saw me. I was a means to an end and she was basically a parasite who felt I lived to make her happy. I’ve lived a life with that woman eating me financially, and that hasn’t changed.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal