Our two young lovers had a rare and much needed phone conversation tonight. Dart hopes he didn’t make her unhappy (but he’s almost sure he did) when he voiced his disappointment that she’d not written to him yet. He’s awfully sorry to have made her sad.

“Your voice sounded a bit weak when you said ‘hello,’ and I wasn’t sure I should go ahead and start talking. How nice it sounded, though when you screamed ‘It’s Dart!’ I didn’t recognize you till then.”

He tells her that the inexpensive pen his folks gave him for Christmas after the scare he had that he’d lost the wonderful pen Dot had given him, is leaking all over his fingers and his desk. Still, the point is rather nice, and he appreciates his parents’ thoughtfulness.

He’s completely fed up with his American lit class. For a dime, he’d chuck the whole thing and let his arrogant, hypocritical teacher know why. He got a C- on the last test, even though Dart believes it should have been much higher. The grading is very subjective and very tough. Almost no one in the class is satisfied. Because it’s a class in his major, he must get a B or higher, but he has no idea how to read the teacher’s mind and figure out what he needs to do better. Even a conference with the instructor today failed to give him any guidance.

After class today, a girl walked up to him and asked if his name was Dart. He admitted it was and she said she’d been Dot’s roommate at Andrews for two years. She wanted Dot’s address so she could write to her, and she asked that Dart say hello for her. Now he’s ashamed to admit that after being in class with her for 12 weeks, he has no idea what her name is. He describes he to Dot as “very small, dark hair, dark eyes, roundish face, full lips. She’d been Dot’s roomie in 10th and 11th grades. She reported that she’d gone to Nancy Arghi’s wedding, but neither her father or her stepmother had shown up. Nancy lives a couple of doors from her parents and hasn’t seen them since the wedding.

He wonders if Dot got her tooth before her surgery. He doubts she was in any state to see the full moon at midnight the other day. Dart appreciated it through the crystal sky that a few hours later dumped three inches of snow on Cleveland.

Cryptically he adds, “I’m awfully sorry that your deal with Mom is off. I was sure hoping my guess was right, and now that it was right, what good does it do?” I think this indicates that Dart was hoping the plot she was hatching with his mom was for her to come to Cleveland for a visit. I suppose her surgery has put an end to that…or has it? Dart seems to think so.

No letter tomorrow, but Dart will be back on the 9th.