A Breakup, and a March 19, 1984 letter

I was in the middle of the final semester of my sophomore year of college and in the process of finally deciding my choice of major (psychology). Tito was working at a credit union not too far from his home and received a telephone call from his long-distance girlfriend at the time, Jo. In response to the letter posted here, he had sent her a cassette tape letting her know that he'd decided to end their relationship.

Jo had originally called his family home and they informed her that he was at work and gave her his number there. Given the nature of the call, Tito told her that he'd call her back when he was on his lunch hour. After returning home, he spent his entire break dealing with Jo's hysterical reaction to his choice to break up with her. She pleaded with him to give her another chance, but he had made up his mind. He did his best to explain why he felt things had to end in a gentle, but firm way. After some time, he said, "I don't know what else I can say," and she replied with, "Say you'll try." He had been trying over weeks of being given the silent treatment. She only wanted to talk now that things were over.

The letter I'm posting is the catalyst for Tito's decision to end things, though it wasn't the only thing. The rest of the story is detailed in my book and there is another letter that preceded this one which was hysterical and vague. That letter came out of the blue and was followed by Jo's refusal to talk to him for three weeks until this letter came along. It may be unfair to reach any particular conclusions, but I felt this entire situation was an attempt to manipulate Tito into financing a trip to California (again) for her. I'm not even sure if the first letter and subsequent refusal to speak to him weren't a way of creating tension to increase the chances that he'd foot the bill for a vacation for her, but I'm inclined to be cynical based on my experiences with Jo.

Arbitrary Decisions and an August 5, 1987 letter

Much of what Tito encountered while working in Japan pointed to irrational and arbitrary decision-making and it was often annoying. One of the earliest frustrations was his superiors refusal to disclose the address at which he'd be staying once he completed his training. This not only left me with no place to send my correspondence to him, but also meant his parents couldn't mail his trailing possessions for about two weeks. Since they were sending them seamail and he was only going to stay for a year, that meant he would be receiving them after an even more significant chunk of his time there had passed than necessary.

Over time, it became clear that what seemed arbitrary was less that and more about holding on to flexibility until the very last second. It was possible that they had had experiences with teachers who flaked out during or after training and they didn't want to give out the address until they were sure Tito was actually going to be at the school. If he flew the coop and his mail started arriving there, it could have represented a complication.

It was also possible that they wanted to keep the possibility open for reassigning Tito to a different school or putting a different teacher in that apartment if they didn't like his performance during training or simply changed their minds. Tito was the first teacher at a new branch of the school and for most of his year in Japan, he was the only native English speaking teacher there. After Tito completed his contract with AMVIC, the next person who moved into that apartment worked at a branch far away from Kita-Senju so they clearly weren't concerned with placing teachers near the branches they were working at.

In this letter, Tito updated me on how things were going, and how hard it was to extract even the simplest information from the Japanese people representing his school.

August 4, 1982 letter

When I compose these posts, I go through my files of scanned correspondence, find one that I want to share, and read it until a story or thought relating to that letter, card, or photo pops into my head. I then share that store and the scan. Recent events (the pandemic) have made it nearly impossible for me to bring up my old memories from the past and I haven't posted stories because I've been (unsurprisingly) eaten up with anxiety and fear. However, I don't want to stop sharing materials related to my book because I'm blocked about background stories so I decided to just share without an accompanying story sometimes. I'm hoping this will  help me get back on track. I hope you're all safe and well, and we can all get through this together.

Today, I'm sharing a letter which was written during the time period in which Tito had just moved to Japan and was training in Okayama. This was a time period in which he couldn't receive my correspondence (as he was there temporarily and would move to Tokyo when his training was done). I was used to lavish attention from him as our long distance relationship started and his time to leave the U.S. neared, and then there was mostly silence. This was a shock to my system, and this letter reflected that.

"Inappropriate" work conversations, and a July 27, 2987 letter

As I read back through this letter, I had a few thoughts. The first one was that the conversations at work that I talk about here would never be permitted in the present cultural environment in America. My boss would be in a huge vat of boiling hot water for saying the things he said to two female employees at that time. The second thought I had was about why we talked so much about sex at my former workplace. For my part, I think it was because it wasn't something anyone had ever talked to me about before and made me feel more included with the group. It's also likely that, given how out of reach nudity and pornography were at that time compared to the present, it was more taboo and therefore more interesting.

This letter was one of those times when I recounted things that happened in my life in detail to Tito so that he had a better understanding of how I spent my days. It helped him inhabit my reality, which I was only to learn many years later was hardly typical for most people.

Cursive writing, and a July 12, 1987 letter

When Tito was in his early 20's, his mother was filling out some documents that both she and his father needed to sign before she could mail them off. His father wasn't home and wouldn't be home relatively soon and his mother wanted the paperwork completed. She asked Tito to forge her father's signature by looking at some other documents that he'd signed.

Tito knew his father wouldn't care if his name was forged on the documents, and it wasn't anything important enough to be a legal problem in the future. However, he told his mother that he couldn't do it. She argued with him that it was no big deal, but he repeated that he really couldn't do it, and,  it was true.

This was a story Tito told me early on in our relationship to explain that he couldn't forge a signature because he had never learned to write in cursive. He could barely sign his own name in cursive, let alone try to copy someone else's writing. In this day and age, many people never learn cursive, but it was unheard of for children raised in the 70's to not know how to do it. It was one of those classes that Tito had opted to skip when he was younger.

All of the letters and cards that Tito wrote me were printed because he didn't know how to write in cursive. This was the first letter he ever sent me. He's sent cassette tapes and a note on a postcard, but this was the first letter. I think one of the reasons he always preferred talking  on tapes was that his way of writing by hand was slower than mine—because he never learned to write in cursive.