600 Hours of Edward

lawyer’s. I have not figured out how to predict which letterhead I will receive, although I can always predict the letters. I don’t trust predictions anyway. I prefer facts.
    I live in this house alone. When my father bought it for me, he made it clear that I was to have no roommates without approval. I don’t know why my father worried about it. A roommate would probably mess up my routines and fool with my weather data. I know how roommates are. I have seen the television comedy
Perfect Strangers
, although not in many years, as itwas canceled in 1993. I liked Balki Bartokomous. He was very funny. If I had a roommate like Balki, though, I would have to keep watch over my weather data. His rambunctiousness (I love the word “rambunctiousness”) would wear on me if he started fooling with my data.
    – • –
    The two-drawer filing cabinet in my bedroom holds one of the most important collections I have. Inside are my letters of complaint. I have them filed in green office folders under the name of the person I am complaining to, and in those files, the letters are arranged by date.
    You are probably thinking that it is odd to keep copies of letters of complaint, and you would be right if not for the fact that these are not copies. These are the actual letters of complaint, and they will never be sent.
    The letters are Dr. Buckley’s idea. I don’t know where she got it, but it’s a great one. Eight years ago, after my father and his lawyer persuaded Garth Brooks to drop the restraining order against me, my father bought this house for me. He seemed to suggest that the “Garth Brooks incident,” as he still calls it, was what caused him and my mother to decide that I could no longer live in the “family home.” I think that my letters of complaint to Garth Brooks were entirely justified. If you look objectively at country music, you cannot come to any conclusion other than he ruined it. He also ruined a lot of pop music, especially when he pretended to be that Chris Gaines person and when he covered that song by Kiss. I merely wrote to him and let him know about the damage he was doing, because I thought that maybe he didn’t know and would stop if he did. I had to write to him forty-ninetimes before he wrote back, but it wasn’t really him. It was his lawyer.
    After that, I came to live here, and I had to start seeing Dr. Buckley. I have seen her every Tuesday of every month of every year since then. She encouraged me to continue to write my letters of complaint, but she suggested that I not send them so I do not have trouble with other people. I will admit that it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but it really does work. Writing the letters makes me feel better. I find that after I write one and file it away, I soon no longer wish to send it.
    Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman.
    – • –
    Every night at 10:00 sharp, I watch
Dragnet
. I watch only the color episodes of
Dragnet
, the ones that were made between 1967 and 1970.
Dragnet
does not appear on television anymore, so I have to watch the episodes that I recorded on videocassette in 2000, when the TV Land network was still showing it. I have all ninety-eight color episodes on videocassette.
    Because today is October 13, the 287th day of the year (because of the leap year), I will be watching the ninety-first episode of the series, “Burglary: The Dognappers.” This will be the third time this year that I have seen this episode, which originally aired on February 26, 1970.
    Here is my method for watching
Dragnet
: On January 1 of every year, I start with the first episode of
Dragnet
. I then watch the episodes in succession, one each night, until I reach the end, and then I start over.
    Because the 365 days in a year—or 366 days in a leap year—are not cleanly divisible by ninety-eight episodes, I will watcheach of the episodes at least three times a year, and I will watch the first seventy-two episodes four times. Because this is a leap year, I’ll watch the first seventy-three episodes four times. You would think that I would know the first seventy-two (or seventythree) episodes a little better than the others because of the disparity (I love the word “disparity”) in watching them, but I have no proof that’s true. Perhaps I should see if I can find the scripts and run some calculations on how many of the words from the first seventy-two (or seventy-three) I know, as opposed to the last twenty-six (or