Dear Harvard, I’d like to clear the air on a few things regarding my child, Travis Dyer Jr., and his application for the class of 2023.

First of all, Travis was not literally Mr. Teen Astronaut 2018, as your cursory Google search may have already revealed. He does, however, play with Star Wars Legos while Juuling in his room, so we feel that he has the potential to excel in a space-themed talent contest, if one were to be held at some point.

Also, when he wrote that he spent the past two summers mentoring the less fortunate, that was a reference to picking up garbage alongside the highway with work-release inmates as part of court-ordered community service. And when we said that he wrote that, we meant that we hired a guy to write that. Travis never actually saw his application, so you can’t hold him responsible for any minor errors or evidence of felonies therein.

For instance, we just told him, “Make a face like you’re rock climbing, grrrr!” and he had no idea we were going to Photoshop his head onto Alex Honnold’s body and claim that he free-climbed El Capitan up and down. Poor kid. Well, you know, figuratively. He’s actually rich—rich enough to hypothetically pay for a new in-ground swimming pool at a friendly college official’s new Cape house. Which is just a random example of something he might decide to pay for, if you want to look at the attached plans.

Some nefarious person created those videos—probably an admissions officer at Yale or Stanford, hoping to force him to a safety school.

You’ll note that Travis’ grades are not stellar. That’s because he has a thing where it’s hard for him to get good grades and you shouldn’t judge him on that. Judge him instead on his SATs, which were administered at Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings’ house under close supervision from an accredited SAT proctor who had to step out for a few hours to ride his new Sea-Doos. Some skeptic in your office pointed out that on the day Travis was supposed to be taking the tests, he posted shots to Instagram that put him on a pontoon on Lake Havasu, hashtag “booger sugar.” Well, you can easily Photoshop a kid into places he never was—probably, we imagine—and that’s what happened while Travis, and definitely not Ken Jennings, was taking the SATs. As for the videos with the vodka luge and the inflatable donkey: Have you heard of deepfakes? It’s obvious that some nefarious person created those videos—probably an admissions officer at Yale or Stanford, hoping to force him to a safety school. It’s outrageous to think that Travis would ever yell, “I’m too rich to learn how to read!” while emceeing a thong contest with Chet Haze, who we’re delighted to remind you is Tom Hanks’ son.

Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s clarify a few other points. You say that Quidditch is not a real sport even if you do have your own jetpack. Fair enough. But our son was personally recruited by your handball coach, who you can ask all about it once he gets back from a very nice trip to Barbados where he’s been running up quite a tab at the Four Seasons—possibly, who knows?

As for Travis’ juried art exhibition being “not his own work, but a bunch of Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, Damien Hirst and Pieter Bruegel the Elder in one room,” we say: Exactly. Really made you think, didn’t it? How do those pieces go together? And wouldn’t they really be better off in some kind of university art museum for long-term safekeeping? We don’t know! We’re just a silly family that invented microchips. But Travis really does love art, particularly “that sick sawed-in-half shark,” so he’d probably want all his favorite works nearby, wherever he goes to college, wink wink.

We think we’ve addressed the main points, but any further questions regarding Travis’ application should be directed to the company that helped guide him through this process, Wicked Awesome College Kids, LLC. They’re so exclusive that they don’t even have a website, but if you show up by the UPS loading docks in Southie on Tuesday nights, there’s a guy named Limpy Rick who sells discount lobsters and yeah, some of them are already cooked, but anyway he knows a lot about college admissions. It’s kind of like you go down there and he says maybe this here lobster could get into lobster school if it sang a cappella and wired $500,000 into a certain crab’s account, and you can interpret that however you want but you should probably start learning the Billy Joel songbook.

So, we hope we cleared up any misgivings and—hold on, our accountant just walked in. What’s this? Some paperwork documenting our net worth. … I see. OK, Harvard, you know what? Never mind! It turns out we’re so rich it doesn’t matter where any of our kids go to school, because life is going to be just fine for them no matter what. Yeah, Travis is a big dum-dum but he’ll still end up dating Olivia Jade and owning a NBA team. You know, he’ll probably need smart people to help with that. You should send him an application. ◆


Think that’s funny? Send unbiased emails to ezra@improper.com.


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