94. My posture, facial expression (if any), tone of voice, gait, all were of constant critical interest as you strove to achieve a perfect balance in me.
"Sit up. Don't slouch." Then, "Relax. You make me nervous just to look at you."
"Why such a gloomy look?" Then, "Wipe that smirk off your face."
"Pick up your feet." Then, "Can't you walk without sounding like a herd of elephants?"
"Speak up. Don't mumble." "Keep your voice down."

95. Now you call me on the phone to ask, "Why don't you ever call us? Why do you shut us out of your life?" So I start to tell you about my life, but you don't want to hear it. You want to know why I didn't call.
I didn't call because I don't need to talk to you anymore. Your voice is in my head, talking constantly from morning till night. I keep the radio on, but I still hear you and will hear you until I die, when I will hear you say, "I told you," and then something else will happen.

Afterward:

95 Theses 95 is a neatly typed manifesto brought home by a Wobegonian in late October 1980, along with a fine woman from Boston whom his parents wanted to meet, since he had married her a few weeks before. His parents live in a little white house on the corner of Branch and Taft, where his old bedroom under the eaves has been lovingly preserved. He left his wife to look at it and snuck away to the Lutheran church, intending to nail the 95 to the door, a dramatic complaint against his upbringing, but then something in his upbringing made him afraid to pound holes in a good piece of wood, and he heard the Luther Leaguers inside at their Halloween pizza party and was afraid he would be seen - also, he was afraid the 95 would blow away since all he had were small carpet tacks. So he took it downtown and slipped it under newspaperman Harold Starr's door with a note that said, "Probably you won't dare publish this."

Harold considered publication twice - first when his pipes froze and the office toilet burst, putting the Linotype out of commission and leaving him short of copy, and again when he had three wisdom teeth pulled and sprained his ankle, which he had hooked around the pedestal of the dentist's chair, and had to use crutches for three days during which he heard the same joke about those teeth having long roots more than thirty times - but he held off, and the 95 remains on his desk, in a lower stratum of stuff under council minutes and soil conservation reports.

In the same stack are some letters from the anonymous author asking for his manuscript back. Like so many writers of manifestos, he forgot to keep a copy, and over the years his letters have descended to a pitiful pleading tone quite unlike his original style.

I simply can't understand despite repeated requests. . . . This is very important to me. . . . The ms. is mine and I need it now for a longer work I'm writing. . . . I know you are busy and please forgive me if I seem impatient but I beg you to please attend to this small matter. I enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope.

Five such envelopes sit in the stack, with five addresses that show a general trend toward the east and south, with one brief long jump to California. Three are plain manila envelopes, two are Federal Express. The manuscript of 95 has sustained some coffee damage but is in good shape, except for three pages that are missing. "They are around here somewhere, I remember seeing them," says Harold, "and as soon as I get this desk straightened around and find the damn things, I'll send it all back to him. I'm just one person, you know, I'm not the U.S. Post Office."

Doug,

congratulations on reaching the end of this mammoth set of postings. Take a breath, now!