Well, Dot’s sure mad now! Mad, sad and bitterly disappointed. She’s responding to Dart’s latest news about measels, confinement and his delayed leave.  “I have now abandoned the theory that ‘Wishing Will Make it So.’ Because if ever I wanted anything in my life, it was for you to come home the end of February so I could see you.  Every time I breathed, I wished that, but it now seems to have been a silly waste of time.” (Note: Dot will finish her schooling in February and then probably return to Greenwich, Connecticut for several months to do her practicum. Distances in 1944 were much larger than today, so her chances of seeing Dart anywhere but Cleveland were slim.)

Deciding that such sad talk was probably not doing Dart much good, she switches gears. “Today we inexperienced, just plain no-good typists had our second lesson. I like it more every time I hit a key (which is, unfortunately, comparitavely seldom.)”

She also mentiones a new movie called “Dust to Dust”  which Andrews girls are barred from seeing. Apparently the headmaster of the school sent an editorial to the local paper and the Cleveland “Plain Dealer,” stating that it was not a movie for ‘nice young girls to see.'” (Makes me want to rush right out and find it on Netflix!)

In typical Dot fashion, she ends the letter on an up beat. First with a cheeky definition of a sailor, and then with a cartoon drawing that depicts one of the food shortages folks on the homefront had to endure.