Here's a true story about my dad. When I was little, we were on a beach in Oregon and he found a message in a bottle.
The note contained an address, with a plea in a young boy's handwriting to send a postcard and let him know how far the bottle had traveled.
The note contained an address, with a plea in a young boy's handwriting to send a postcard and let him know how far the bottle had traveled.
It had very clearly been thrown in the ocean from the nearby crab docks. It probably traveled a whopping 1/2 mile before washing up in the sand.
He decided to wait until we got back to California to send the postcard, so it would seem like the bottle floated all the way south.
He decided to wait until we got back to California to send the postcard, so it would seem like the bottle floated all the way south.
The postcard ended by saying "I threw the bottle back in the ocean for someone else to find!"
Then he shared the address with his brother, who sent a similar postcard from Seattle a few weeks later. His postcard ended the same way.
Then he shared the address with his brother, who sent a similar postcard from Seattle a few weeks later. His postcard ended the same way.
They did this for DECADES, sending postcards to this kid from all the places they traveled, always saying they were throwing the bottle back in the water. Mexico, Alaska, Boston, Florida, London! "I found it in the Thames!"
Sometimes he'd recruit friends, so that the handwriting didn't always match. He sent that kid postcards from Chicago, from Paris, from landlocked towns in Wisconsin and Oklahoma. He kept the address in his wallet, though it didn't really matter because he'd memorized it long ago.
Somewhere out there a grown man from Tacoma has hundreds of postcards in my dad's scratchy handwriting. If there was a way he could do a good deed *while also being slightly mischievous*, he was all in. That's the kind of guy he was.
