Karen knows being the baby is best.
As the months on the island passed and the Broquets came to view Samoa as home, the letters to the family back in Detroit changed. Originally three to four pages long, now they were barely two full pages (unless there was a hurricane, in which case – six pages, single spaced!). Somewhere after the first year, Larry and Jean made a remarkable discovery: carbon paper could cut their letter writing time in half. They were upfront about it to their parents, making sure that each set got one original page and one carbon, as if that somehow justified that they weren’t spending hours on each letter. Larry embraced the concept wholeheartedly, although fully one-third of his letters ended with “Oh hell! I just discovered I had the carbon in backwards again!” Since all the big expository subjects had already been described in the missives of the last eighteen months, the letters now described parties, the children, the weather, and what they had for dinner. And hints. Lots and lots of hints.
The Samoan Letters 