Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

As a child, Allie writes a letter to her future self and buries it in the backyard. Though she intends to dig it up 15 years later, she only remembers 17 years later. In the letter, she asks many questions about dogs and reminds her future self that she has blonde hair and blue eyes. Almost as an afterthought, she asks if her parents are still alive. The letter includes drawings of dogs; at its end, child Allie asks adult Allie to “[p]lease write back” (6).

Adult Allie considers this exhortation and decides to write several letters to her younger selves. She reminds her two-year-old self that face cream is not frosting and advises her not to eat it. She tells her four-year-old self to stop eating salt—apparently, she thought that eating pepper would cancel out the saltiness. She implores her five-year-old self to stop being so creepy; to her six-year-old self she says that the letter R is not as hard to write as it looks. To her seven-year-old self, she writes a reminder to keep her clothes on. She tells her 10-year-old self to stop pretending to be a dog and running through the backyard obstacle course. She writes to her 13-year-old self about the absurdity of pretending to be a wizard and how none of her fake spells will work.