"In my younger days I had a penpal named LeShandy. He was a boy roughly the same age and lived in a faraway place I had never heard of called Iceland.

Sometimes he would mention, to my surprise, that Iceland was very, very green. And he had been to Greenland once and it was covered with ice. He asked his father why this was the case and his father had told him that the Vikings once plundered both Iceland and Greenland.

They had gone to Greenland and found it unpleasant, rough terrain. They went to Iceland next and liked it very much, like that little bear with the just-right porridge and all. They didn't want anybody to take the place they wanted to live, so they called the green land Iceland and the ice land Greenland.

I told LeShandy his dad was a liar and he had made the entire story up because he didn't know why. LeShandy got very angry and never wrote me back, either that or he lost my address or died or something.

I've never had a penpal since, unless you count that little girl from El Salvador that I sent all that pocket change to. I can't remember her name but I know she needed a lot of innoculations and ate her weight in grain every week, the squat little pig."

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