Best letter to the editor...EVER!

One of our favorite moments of the week at my shop is to open up one of the weeklies we print and peruse it for all of the goofy small town news. Cows on the road, random pictures of flowers and people looking like they'd rather have their toenails pulled out than be photographed, etc.
Well, today we open it up and see this gem of a letter to the editor:

I am a concerned parent of Taurean Tillman. My son is obsessed with driving a school bus. This is all he talks and my son is serious. You may think it's funny, but it's not. Just ask me or my nephew.
Please if you see him and he brings up driving a school bus, please try and change the subject to something else. It's not funny at my house.
I don't know what God has for Taurean in the future, but right now, I know it's not driving a school bus.
Thanking you in advance, a concerned parent.

So is Taurean 8 years old? 38 years old? Does he scream out, "Mama, I just wanna drive a bus!" and his mother replies, "Dammit boy, you're gonna get an education! Stop it with all that bus drivin' nonsense!"
I just can't help but get the feeling there's a great movie in this. Maybe a cross-country buddy flick where Taurean steals a broken down school bus and drives off to California.

 

Further.

 

A bit demeaning of people and weekly papers. They fill a niche of community. Yes, some are hokey, but I have seen more trash in a bad metro than the worst weekly.

I don't know why that letter is even in a letter to the editor.

 

Nine out of 10 people who see Taurean will now initiate conversations about school buses, how cool they are and how much fun it would be to drive one for one's livelihood. He will accept from some stranger, and wear proudly, a T-shirt that says, "Stay in school . . . buses" His future, in short, is over.

(Nine out of 10 people who read or heard about the letter to the editor, that is. Don't know what the paper's circulation or penetration woes might be...)

 

Especially for those of us who work at weeklies.

 

I certainly wasn't trying to demean all weeklies. I've read some good ones. This particular one is just truly, truly awful. But in a fun kind of way.

 

I always liked this weekly:

 

It kind of sounds to me like this particular weekly was demeaning itself ...

 

You mean the Weekly World News? I don't know, I mean, if you have pictures, you kind of have to go with the story.

 

No, I meant the one that published the wacky letter to the ed. The Weekly World News is simply practicing fine journalism

 

Ah, gotcha.

I remember when I was interviewing for a copy editor gig at a daily back in November 2006. The web editor reviewed copies of then-recent editions of the weekly I edit and she said they had a lot more hard-hitting news than she'd expect for a weekly.

Made my heart proud.