MAE JULIAN
The Bedbug Letter
I have had a new experience these past few days. I have to admit to never being much interested in politics and even less in politicians, but fate caused me to cross paths with a woman who is running for State Representative in Kentucky.‑ We were both in Kinkos, waiting for stuff to be printed. We struck up a conversation, and‑before I knew it,‑I had volunteered to help her with her campaign. She had never run for office before, but was a schoolteacher for thirty years, had some good ideas, and I liked her immediately.
My job was to stuff newspaper boxes, and talk to people. I also needed to stick those signs in the ground where passing traffic could see them. Now, there are restrictions as to where you can place signs and you also can’t stuff your brochures in the mailboxes. Now, even with the best of intentions, I found myself taking liberties, especially when it came to those signs that take a muscle man to shove into the ground. It was also raining.‑ After I pushed about two in, I decided to place them wherever I saw fit. After all, I’m just a dumb cluck. What can they do to me?
Then, as I was standing in the grassy median of a busy boulevard, I remembered my brother, John’s, “Bedbug Letter Story”.‑ I knew that my new friend, who is running for office, would surely get complaints about sign placement, so I decided to pass this story of John’s on to her to use when the time is appropriate:
A salesman went into a big city and found that a convention was being held and that there were no rooms anywhere. However, there was one room that was the Presidential Suite. It was $1500.00 a night, but he figured he was on an expense account, and it would beat sleeping in his hot car.
The next day he got out of bed and noticed he was covered with red bumps. He itched fiercely, and went to a doctor to determine the cause. The doctor said he regretted telling him something so embarrassing, but that he was covered with bed bug bites.
The man was furious. He wrote a scathing letter to the manager of the hotel, expressing his rage that such a thing could happen. He carried on like a man possessed, and demanded his money back.
Two weeks later, he got a letter from the manager. The manager wrote that he was never so stricken in his life to hear that his staff had allowed such a thing to happen. He explained he was the manager of the finest establishment in town, and in order to see to it that such a thing would never happen again, he had fired the head of housekeeping, the entire staff, and taken on new employees who would be of a more trustworthy nature. He apologized profusely, saying he was deeply sorry he could not return the money, but he hoped that the man could rest assured that never again would such a travesty occur on his watch.
The man felt satisfied that he had had such an impact on the manager, but then noticed a strange mark on the top upper left hand corner of the envelope. He studied it, and it looked like a paper clip impression with indentations underneath.‑ It appeared a message had been written, and the note removed.
He took a pencil and lightly stroked over the indentations to find the following,‑ “Send this jerk the bedbug letter.”
My brother humbly confessed that the bedbug letter story originated with E. Gordon Liddy. In my family, everyone has known for years what is meant by, “Send a bedbug letter, or…I got a bedbug letter. “‑ And it always brings belly laughs. Now, I will have to say to my new friend who I hope will be elected, ” When you start getting complaints about where the material for your campaign was found, just send them the bedbug letter.”
Always good for a laugh,
Mae Julian
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