Dear Father,

 Pickleball. Squash. Cribbage. They sound like the nasty peasant foods from Oliver Twist, the kind of savage gruel they serve here in the dining halls. No matter what they are, they certainly aren’t “sports.” You told me that it would be like Oxford here. Father, you are a liar and a lout. Oxford has a rowing team, and this is not “like Oxford.” In fact, this is Pitzer, and I haven’t seen a boat yet. Please sign my Change.org petition.

 You asked the housekeeper to ask how school is going for me. Recently, I have been struggling to grasp the theory of my Praxis requirements. The solution is more money. Send your most excellent son (as you say, your only trueborn son) more than the pittance you throw away on tuition and also 95% of Pitzer’s operating budget. The “extracurricular support” (a rowing team, Whites Encouraged) would allow me to reach my fullest potential in the Economics baccalaureate. If Pitzer had a rowing team, they would probably reward you with a worthy GPA of someone inheriting the S&P 500 and Walmart’s Pharmacy Division. Also, I want a boat.

 The overall project—I call it Operation Wet Bootstraps—is simple enough. Imagine what they did in Panama, with less malaria. Please contract a construction crew to raze the Claremont slums and put in a canal. Blow up the Claremont Village and turn it into a private lake for the respectable folk, something akin to the Long Island Sound or our several marinas. If I had unlimited time to supervise the laborers we’d flood the adjoining Russian Village, too. The existing tenements for the beet farmers are not profitable as is. Please send their cheap garb and bankrupt customs back to the slummier slums of Montclair.

 You are a cruel man for making me go to Pitzer. You didn’t want to shell out for a nice college by the sea. I learned in a praxis curriculum course about the concept of reparations. Well, repair our relationship and buy myself and the chums a nice, new boat. I would settle for a schooner. Again, don’t forget the river! You will have to make a new one, as the Los Angeles River would be in a pitiable condition if I knew how to pity. The only “boats” I saw in those dregs were the buoyant homeless fellows those nouveau riche enjoy drowning with their sturdy peasant hands.

Last night I drowned several rats in a shoebox. This was to show the meathead coaches that a rowing team will make the strong boys far tougher than golf or football can. Things mostly went to plan. The rats drowned, because they did not understand that rowing could have saved them. If I was a rat, I would have used the cardboard flaps as oars to row my way out. After this practical demonstration, nobody understood what I was getting at, and what I hope, in this letter, to have reminded you of; rowing is the standing on thin ice, it is the communal baptism of fire and sheer grit.

 Dad (can I call you that?), you may not know what this means to me. That is because you were always very busy taking business trips to hotels and buying furs for the help. Please send me $20 million and lay off the mink. Sign this Change.org and make a real difference in my life.

 Your son,

 Percy Rivers III

 P.S. For Spring Break I am coming to our third home; they will need to prepare the yacht and have someone distress my jeans in the April closet.