An Open Letter to Dr.

Pepper
Dear Dr. Pepper,
If loving you is wrong, then I dont want to be right. I am aware that you are veritably
swimming with carcinogens that will likely take five years off of my life. I am aware that you may be
singlehandedly responsible for the ever-growing rolls of flesh around my waistline. I am aware that
I cant pronounce the majority of your ingredients, which, to a person more reasonable than I,
would stand as a signal to ignore your devilish charms.
But we all have our flaws, and yours are not enough to deter me.
How do you do it, Dr. Pepper? How is it that I have been drinking you for fifteen years and
have never been disappointed? I am the type of person who feels bitter and cheated when my
Toaster Strudel doesnt cook all the way through. The fact that I have never not once felt that
way towards you makes me believe this is a love that will outlast nuclear war, pestilence, and
plague. After the end of the world, all that will be left among the rubble of human civilization will
be you and I, standing victorious among eddies of cockroaches, your aluminum casing still
miraculously frosty to the touch.
I realize sometimes I use you, and for that I apologize. I know it must have been
demoralizing for you at times, when I would treat you as though you were something common and
trashy like alcohol. After today, I would say tiredly to my similarly beleaguered coworkers, I just
need a tall cool Dr. Pepper. I ruined a few among your number by crying into them after a
particularly harsh breakup, although Im sure the tinge of salt I tasted was just my imagination. I
drank them anyway, of course. You dont just let Dr. Pepper go to waste.

Sadly all good things come to an end. Our pending separation will be difficult for me. All
that is left of our most recent fling is an empty and battered cardboard box, the garish red label on
the front reminding me of what we used to have, of what is no longer there. It taunts me, that box.
You know what they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I am realizing that more and
more. We will be reunited again soon, Dr. Pepper. And what a glorious reunion it will be.

Sincerely,
Jordan Davidson

An Open Letter to Kendra, My Friends Friend Whose Facebook Page I Stalked After She Died
Dear Kendra, My Friends Friend Whose Facebook Page I Stalked After You Died,
A few nights ago I came across your name highlighted in blue, sandwiched in the middle of
the usual inane Facebook postings of quiz results and aesthetically pleasing arrangements of food.
The status highlighting you was simple Wow, Kendra, I cant believe it. Im gonna miss you.
but my interest was immediately piqued. Such statuses usually imply a breakup, a death, or another
similarly dramatic loss. Never one to miss an opportunity to indulge in anonymous voyeurism, I
clicked on your name and was taken to your Facebook page.
Youll have to forgive me for what I did next, because I know it was creepy. I know you
didnt know my name, wouldnt have recognized me if I passed you on the street, although I
certainly would have recognized you, considering the twenty minutes I spent combing through
your photo albums. I hadnt meant to do that, I promise. You just looked to use a tired clich
so alive in your photos.
Facebook said you were eighteen years old. Your profile picture showed only part of your
face - one half a tousled mane of dyed red curls, one big blue eye framed by lashings of mascara
and grey eye shadow and your cover photo had obviously been taken at a rave somewhere. It
showed colorful strobe lights against a curtain of black, shadows of red and blue lurking ominously
in the background, and golden sparkles climbing up the dark walls. You worked at Taco Bell and
your statuses were mostly about your dogs, your videos mostly makeup and hair tutorials. I envied
you, for you seemed exactly the kind of young and free spirited person Id always wanted to be.
I started to feel weird about myself when I began searching your name to figure out what,
exactly, had prompted my friend to write that status about you. I was invested now, though not so

much that I was willing to go the standard route and ask my friend about it. What I got was three
pages of Google results; images from different angles of the twisted and misshapen remains of a
white Buick slumped in the middle of Interstate 80. A close up of a desiccated windshield, the
scattered glass glimmering on the asphalt like stars condemned to hell. A photo of a mahogany
coffin topped with pink streamers and a spray of yellow roses, surrounded by mourners in black. I
didnt need to read any of the accompanying news articles to guess what had happened. I closed
out quickly before I saw photos of anything worse a smear of blood, or a body covered by
shimmering blue plastic, or an ambulance idling alongside the accident scene with its lights off and
its sirens ominously silent.
Instead I went back to Facebook where your page was still open, your solitary blue eye
almost accusatory now, like you knew what I was doing and you disapproved. I stared at your
picture for longer than I care to admit. What right did I have to be sitting there, secretly sifting
through the last evidences of your life when I knew that life was now over? Why did I think it was
okay to hunker over your pictures and status updates and Tumblr reposts, indulging in them like
death porn for the masses? What separated me from you, other than the fact that you were
probably watching me from somewhere unseen right now as I ogled the spectacle of your life and
marveled at your ignorance of its impending end?
It was then that I understood why people look twice when driving past accident scenes,
craning their necks for the sight of flames or a mutilated body. We are grateful that we arent those
people, but somewhere we realize how easily we could become them. Precious little keeps us from
sharing their misfortune, other than pure luck. Luck that could run out at any given moment.

Im sure that when you posted that last update - a recipe for cupcakes with M&Ms in the
middle that promised to keep the M&Ms intact and crispy - you hadnt planned on ending that
night by meeting a Toyota going the wrong way on the freeway. As I sit here writing this, I dont
plan to be run down by a Rav4 tomorrow while walking in the crosswalk to class but it could
happen, easily, and then what? What do I become, other than a name in someones mournful
Facebook status, some tragic photos on Google, and a collection of albums, status updates, and
videos that people I dont know exist will curiously browse through?
I guess what Im trying to say is Im sorry, Kendra. Im sorry that I capitalized on your death
to feed my own curiosity, and Im even sorrier for using your death as my catapult into grandiose
philosophizing. If it makes you feel any better, I know now to never make that mistake again. From
here onwards I will let the dead rest in peace, as they should. For all I know I could be joining
them soon enough, anyway.

Most sincerely,
Jordan Davidson

An Open Letter to the Empty My Friends Album on My Facebook Page

Dear Empty My Friends Album on My Facebook Page,
Some say you are a mark of laziness, others a shrine to shyness. Others, who tend to view
the world in less kind terms, may think you are a sign of some crippling social anxiety. Its quite
amazing, really, the amount of judgment a simple lapse in attention can invoke.
If I think about it enough I can probably remember the moment of your creation. I can
picture a seventeen-year-old version of me perched before our old Windows Vista PC, which
asthmatically whirred and wheezed as I created you. Everyone I knew was making these albums,
swept up in the process of further cementing Facebook as a time capsule of attention deficit and
narcissism. We were convinced the worlds orbit shifted and changed based upon our relative
places within it, and that all captivated eyes rested solely on us.
Really, you represent everything I try to avoid: excessive showmanship, intellectual
dishonesty, and obnoxious Im better than you gesticulating. Ive always thought that too many
people spend their time creating artifice, constructing the image of a well-lived life rather simply
living one. Minutes wasted taking cheap cell phone photographs, posting them, naming and
captioning and tagging and organizing, quickly tally up to hours, to days, all spent mired in the
swamp of expectation and posturing we build for ourselves.
I can think of so many better uses for those days, those finite moments that can slip
through our fingers like silk if we dont pay attention. Rather than plastering an uninspired
mockery of life across glistening computer screens, I choose to spend my precious moments living,
embracing the picture worthy moments as they pass.
You are not the mark of a life wasted in solitude.

You are the mark of a life lived so enormously that a 2D computer screen could hardly
contain it all.

Sincerely,
Jordan Davidson