Millennial Finds Card to President From 2001—Can’t Cope With What She Wrote

The handwritten letter complaining about schoolwork that a woman wrote to President George W. Bush when she was just 8 years old has left the internet in stitches.

As a writer and communications consultant with a career in social impact, Roya Shariat has always been vocal about causes that she’s passionate about. Even when she was younger, she was determined to enact change and highlight the injustices of the world.

Of course, at the age of 8, one of the biggest injustices that Shariat, now 32, had was having to juggle her homework with her Kumon workload after school. She told Newsweek that she “really loathed” having to sit at the kitchen table and do math or reading challenges as part of the Kumon tutoring program.

In fact, Shariat, who previously lived in New York but has since moved to London, U.K., hated it so much that she decided to write about it. But not just to her parents or her tutor—rather, to the commander-in-chief in 2001, President Bush.

Shariat said: “From a young age, I believed in the power of using my voice, and by then I had already submitted recipes to the kid’s section of the Washington Post, called into a Food Network show to chat with the host about desserts, and was writing my own stories.”

As it turns out, Shariat’s dad has been holding onto the handwritten card ever since. He recently returned it to her, inside the white envelope addressed to “1600 Penselvainia Avenue.” The card featured a cartoon horse with pink butterflies and a rainbow in the backdrop—the standard choice to send to any world leader.

Shariat couldn’t believe her eyes when her dad handed her the card, as she had no idea he’d kept it. After realizing that she’d written a letter to the President, she wondered what important cause it must have been about.

Speaking out against the perils of using Kumon weren’t what she had in mind.

The message inside the card reads: “Dear Mr. Bush, is it illegal (spelled iligeal) to force kids to work so hard right when they get home? Please write me back.”

By the time Shariat wrote it, 9/11 had happened and the War on Terror had begun.

“From the moment I saw the Lisa Frank card, I burst out laughing,” Shariat said. “I was impressed with my own audacity—escalating matters directly to the president. It also brought back memories of Kumon and homework,…