mre

Okay, by now we are sure that you are all wondering who in the world Mr. E. is, and why we've made him our enemy. We have known Kyle Bonham since about the beginning of time. Marie has been his rival since fourth grade, when they argued over whose name would go first on a student editor letter for the school newspaper. Alphabetical order won out . . . and things have never been the same. When fate happened and Marie moved out in the country near enough Kyle so she could see his house, the bus escapades began. But it wasn't until Joan moved out in the bus-route range about a year later that Joan and Marie were born.

Kyle is a person who loves to make fun of you for no reason at all, and his ego is enormous. Why do you think we call him Mr. E.? The E stands for the huge ego that he has. So we, Joan and Marie, being the best friends that we are, started teaming up against him. We knew we had to fight back in an unusual manner . . . or that we would never win.

So we decided to create a screen name and send him e-mails. Stalking, you would say? No, never. We would never do physical damage . . . we just wanted to psyche him out a bit. And we believe we succeeded in that, at least. The first name was an AOL name on Marie's computer, but when we got little response from our Mr. E (the ego suddenly disappeared when he had no idea who he was talking to), we deleted the screen name and hid the secret within us.

We didn't think that we would have to use it again, but we were wrong. Kyle's teasing over no reason started up again, and this time we created the Yahoo address. It still exists.

Our first e-mail to Mr. E simply asked him if he missed us, and things like that. It has been misplaced from our files. We do remember that it was long and had plenty of comments that could be responded to.

This was Kyle's response:

Okay . . .

We were mad that he had responded so little:

"Okay"?! Is that all you have to say? It's such a shame that you run out of your smart aleck comments when you run into strangers. Please write a little more next time. We won't bite unless you give us a reason to.
Cheers,
Joan and Marie

He did not respond. So we gave up the charade for a few months, until our freshmen years started up . . . and for the first time, he was not with us. He had left for Park Tudor, thinking our school was not good enough and would not educate us properly. We think it is a perfectly fine school and remain there, as we have for nearly all our lives (both of us have been here in this middle-of-nowhere town since kindergarten). We were involved in the marching band and performed at football games. Mr. E. attended one of them. Also, a mutual friend of ours wrote an essay on how religion is needed in schools, which another mutual friend of ours sent to him via e-mail. (Kyle is an atheist. That is not the reason that we have sent him e-mails and made him our enemy; the reason is because quite frankly he was being a complete jerk at the time. Being an atheist is his choice and we have not tried to change him. Just making that clear.) He also invited us to a concert, which we could not attend because it was the same night as the band lock-in. Now that we have provided you with the background information for our next e-mail, it will make more sense:

Hello, Kyle.
So how did you like the football game? Yes, so the home team lost by a million points . . . so what? The band was decent. And the religious essay? Did you like that? We thought that it was a good essay with valid points, but then that's us . . . and this is you we're talking about. We won't be able to make it to your concert. We have previous plans. And we have a message: Someone tells us that he's going to beat you up if you don't leave his girl alone.
Toodles,
Joan and Marie

The "someone" that we mentioned is code-named Paco, who is Joan's boyfriend. There is also a letter from Paco on this site; after seeing this site as a work-in-progress, he wanted to be a part of it, also.

Kyle actually responded to the e-mail this time:

What are your previous plans? And who is the WE? what girl? What are you talking about?

Our Mr. E had come on to us. He knew Joan's true identity, and was pretty sure of Marie's (although he would not have figured it out had there not been a slip of our tounges, as for awhile he was sure that it was someone else). So we decided to confess.

From Our Files: Letters from Mr. E (con't)