VERY SORRY

Hello loves! I have been unusually busy the last few days (doing what, I'm still not sure) and thus have had no time to write you a charming, clever post about the goings-on in Scandinavia. Sadly, I suspect my unusually busy state will continue into the immediate and continuing future. However, because I don't want you to feel like I am ignoring you, I leave you with this: Part 1 of the Jonathan Safran Foer Saga which occurred sometime in early 2008. (And my apologies to those of you who've already read this, and more so to those of you who were involved in it).

Jonathan Safran Foer ,
I wish you would have emailed me back.

I.
On Friday in New York, we are walking on 31st street when Jennie says, “Jonathan Safran Foer is teaching my fiction class.” My hands start to shake and it’s not because it’s January.

On Saturday I decide to send Jonathan Safran Foer an email to see if he might still have room in his class even though I missed the application deadline by 36 days, 4 hours, and 38 minutes and have not previously taken English 125. I do this because, as my mother says, if you don’t ask, the answer is definitely no. I tell him this in the email too. I spend five hours working on my email and the pieces I am going to send to Jonathan Safran Foer and then, right before I am going to send it, I get cold feet. Not literally of course, because my dorm is very well heated and I have lots of warm socks, but cold feet like scared that maybe he will be annoyed with me because he is so popular and famous. My suitemate Trinh says to send it anyway because I’ll never get the chance again. So I do.

The truth is that I have not read any of Jonathan Safran Foer’s books, but I did read The History of Love which is by his wife, Nicole Krauss, and The History of Love is beautiful. Although I have not yet read any of Jonathan Safran Foer’s books, I think that he will be a good writer, because I don’t think that Nicole Krauss, who is an amazing writer, would have married someone who couldn’t tell a good story.

I check my email compulsively every 2 hours (except when I am sleeping, or not by a computer) on Saturday and Sunday and Monday. Every time I am very sad to discover that Jonathan Safran Foer has not emailed me back. To make myself feel better, I make up rationalizations of why Jonathan Safran Foer has not emailed me back. My favorite thought is that, Jonathan Safran Foer is trying to get in contact with Ruben Roman, who is the English registrar, to get me into his class. In this scenario, he cannot because it is a holiday weekend and Ruben is sick and tired of registering people for English classes and is not answering anyone, even Jonathan Safran Foer . Or, I think that Jonathan Safran Foer doesn’t answer weekend emails on principle, because it is the weekend and he thinks that people should be doing weekend things, like kite-flying or shoe-shopping or cat-napping. Or, I think that something has happened to Jonathan Safran Foer like he was involved in a terrible biking accident in which a pigeon got stuck in his wheel and he flew over the handlebars and into a fruit stand, or maybe just onto the sidewalk.

I imagine that Jonathan Safran Foer broke his wrist and both his eyes got swollen shut, so he couldn’t even answer my email if he wanted to because 1) he couldn’t type and 2) even if he could type, he couldn’t read it to know to answer it. Just in case, I Google Jonathan Safran Foer but there is no news of him being in a tragic bicycle accident or any other sort of dangerous predicament. I then look for a picture of Jonathan Safran Foer and am pleased to see he looks like a reasonable fellow who might let me into his class. I also notice that Jonathan Safran Foer and I both wear glasses. Excellent.

When I don’t here back from Jonathan Safran Foer on Tuesday either, I think that he is either Amish or ignoring me. On Tuesday, after Spanish I see Jennie and ask her if she will still sneak me into her class on Wednesday by letting me pretend to be her pre-frosh. Jennie says no and that she doesn’t want to farm out Jonathan Safran Foer to lecherous fan girls. She also refuses to tell me where the class is. I hope that Jonathan Safran Foer appreciates that his students care about his not being farmed out to lecherous fan girls. Although I am a girl, I am not a lecherous fan (him being not particularly attractive, and my not having read any of his books) but I do know how to use a map, so I do that instead.

After lunch on Tuesday, I remember that Jennie told me about her first assignment so I decided to do it too, just in case. In honor of Martin Luther, who is the namesake of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday was on Monday, I decide to nail something to a door. Well, not actually, because Yale is very touchy about people putting holes in their stuff, which tends to be very old and very expensive. I decide to use tape instead. I tell this to my suitemate, Trinh, and she says tape is not nearly as dramatic.

And so I decide to tape The Jonathan Safran Foer Saga to Jonathan Safran Foer’s door, if I can find it, because it is a completely plausible place to put a work entitled The Jonathan Safran Foer Saga. And on the cover page I will write:

Jonathan Safran Foer ,
I wish you would have emailed me back.

My suitemate Trinh tells me that Jonathan Safran Foer probably won’t let me into his class because I didn’t follow the assignment because my piece is more than 500 words long. I tell her not to worry because Jonathan Safran Foer eyes are probably swollen shut and he won’t be able to read it anyway.