Filament's Letter to Jeri

Filament's Letter
to Jeri
(Edited by Ann L. Clapper)

Jeri and Filament

CHRISTMAS TIME - 1995

Dear Jeri,

Thank you so much for all the wonderful clothes and thank you for being my friend. Sometimes when you are rather old and worn (and a bear) you have only one friend, but I'm very lucky that way...

I think of you often and I hope you are having a wonderful wintertime. It had been quite lovely here and I spend a lot of my free time sitting on the back porch... watching the birds and watching the plants grow.

I guess you know I have a job working for Santa Claus. I'm not supposed to talk about it because it is very secret, but I have already leaked some of the stuff. Every day the conveyance comes for me to transport me to work. No one ever sees the conveyance as it is illusive... actually it's magic, I guess. While I'm gone a clone bear sits in my place. My mom is not too pleased about the clone as he cannot talk.

I work in the computer room at the North Pole. I have to keep track of THE LIST. Mostly I'm in charge of births and deaths. It's a lot of work each day as you can probably imagine.

Almost all the other workers at the pole are elves and most of them live right there. A couple years ago they decided to try a special program of having some of the elves live with regular families. At that time an elf called Framus came to live with us. In the interim Framus has been promoted and is manager of the toy shop. Anyway, he got me the job in the computer room. Fortunately I don't have to work summers, weekends or holidays.

I had a wonderful vacation at Bass Harbor last summer. I especially like swamps, marshes, bogs, and the like. Mom took me to quite a few of 'em on the motor bike. I wish she'd take me out on a canoe sometime so I could really get the feel and smell of the swamp. I must say, though, the swamps here are pretty uninteresting in the winter.

Every Sunday Dad takes us out to breakfast and I always think meeting you at Geary's. I hope you got some breakfast this Sunday.

I love you, Jeri! MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Filament
AKA Philip Albert Mint