Friday Love Letters: Dear Jane Seymour

Dear Jane Seymour,

I realize you’re a classy Englishwoman so I assume it will take more than dinner and a movie coupled with conversation about my fantasy football draft to win you over.  I’m not sure I’m genuinely classy, but I’ve taken pretending to be classy to a whole new level.  I own a smoking jacket and pipe (although I don’t actually smoke) and can talk about wine, cigars, and fox hunts for ten minutes before our cocktail guests begin suspecting I memorized bullet points from Wikipedia.  If you can rescue me every nine minutes our costume parties are destined to be a cracking success.

He's too tall for you.

I hope you don’t mind if we always attend our costume parties dressed as Elise McKenna and Richard Collier from your best film, Somewhere in Time, but please don’t tell our guests I still get weepy every time I see it.  Although it’s one of my favorite films, I’ve never watched it together with my wife because I fear she’ll witness an emasculating flood of waterworks, just like the first time I watched the film as a kid and fell in love with you.  You and Christopher Reeve made a great couple, but you and I would have been even better, especially because I’m only 6’2″ instead of Reeve’s 6’4″ and our kissing scenes wouldn’t have looked as awkward, although we should probably practice the kissing scenes many times just to be certain. 

You were great as Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman.  The thing about the show I liked most was how almost every guy in town was a jerk to you for no reason, and it seemed my chances to win you over would skyrocket just by never saying women had no business working or being doctors.  I would be so supportive of your work as a lady doctor and you would fall in love with me and we would get married and have a bunch of kids and you would have to stop working so you could take care of them.

Just kidding.  This joke about you becoming a housewife is just an example of the jokes I will make to lighten your mood after a long day of battling prejudice and treating wolf bites on the frontier.

I sense you’re still concerned about my level of classiness, but you can ask my wife to vouch for me.  She’ll tell you:  

Once I set a goal to be more classy and I didn’t wear jeans or shorts for six months. 

I refer to anyone not wearing a tie as a peasant.

I’ve made inquiries into acquiring a cravat and monocle, but my neighborhood has eight coffee shops and not one cravat/monocle store. 

When I attend a party and someone offers me pizza, I pretend I’ve never heard of it.  “Not sure I’m game for eating this pee-sa or any other food that requires no silverware, old chum.”  After they shake their heads and turn away, I grab a piece and eat it in the bathroom.

You were one of my favorite Bond girls. I won't say favorite because you suffer unfavorably from having to kiss Roger Moore instead of one of the handsome Bonds.

When people suggest I take the subway, I always answer, “You mean those underground locomotives that poor people ride?”  To be honest, I’m not rich and I do take the subway sometimes but if anyone I know sees me I pretend I’m lost and beg them to help me escape the “underground transport cacophany of the slack-jawed heathens”.

I keep a sport coat next to the door just in case someone rings the bell in the middle of the night and I want to look my best because you never know who might be at the door–it just might be you, Jane Seymour.

When I suggested you confirm my classiness with my wife, don’t tell her it had anything to do with my writing you a love letter; maybe you could say you’re writing an article about me for Monocle Quarterly.