I found the following letter when I took a drive through rural Tennessee. I stopped to stretch my legs next to a small lake I spotted. It was actually a dirty retention pond, but lake sounds better, so we’ll go with lake. Shortly after urinating into an adjacent bush, I noticed an empty bottle of Colt45. I smirked a little—but I was in rural Tennessee, so I wasn’t surprised in the least. A slightly closer look revealed a piece of paper stuck inside the bottle. I figured it was trash, but checked it out anyway just out of curiosity. As it turns out, it was a long lost love letter, set adrift in a small trash-ridden retention pond. Someone must have mistaken one of the main aspects of sending a ‘message in a bottle.’
Regardless, I found the content of the message to be a poignant lesson to be learned from our lovesick friend in Tennessee.
Dear Joan,
I hope this letter finds its way to ya. It’s been forever since I’ve seen ya and I miss seeing yer smile. I’ve been lonely here, the house seems so empty. I remember that one time I got chicken at the store and you said you liked beef more, so I switched it out for the beef, which made you smile. It was good too, you were right…you’re always right. You’re so smart.
I feel like I need you back in my life. We’d be such a good team. Remember that one time you were having a bad day and I cheered ya up by spilling all that milk and pretending to fall down in it and cry? That was one of the best days of my year that year, just seeing ya smile like that.
Where did you go sweet Joan? Where did you go and why did you go? You’re gone now and it hasn’t been the same without ya. I’m 42 now and I ain’t gettin’ any younger. I want you to come back. If I had to guess, I’d say you finally graduated and went off somewhere to college. You’re so smart. It seems like it has probably been about four years now and you were starting to look like you were goin’ from smaller teens into the later teens. I don’t know if that made sense, I’m starting to ramble now. Listen, bottom line is it took me all those years to finally get up the nerve to ask you out, then when I go into the good ole grocery store, the manager says you don’t work there no more. I never had a girlfriend I didn’t have to pay for. I wanted you to be my first one. I always see in the movies that if you put your message in a bottle and throw it in the sea, it will reach the person you wanted it to. So that’s what I’m gonna do. This is it right here.
So please come back, at least for the summer if you are at college.
Love,
Axel Ruggert, the guy who came in every Tuesday with the toothpick and ponytail
The clear lesson here: if you are a man and wear your hair in a ponytail, you will never find love in this world and should probably start collecting flannel shirts and lurking around the cereal aisle in the grocery store. The conversations you have there with customers as you pretend not to know the difference between Count Chocula and Cocoa Crispies will be the extent of your human interaction most days. So either cut it off, or tell the night manager at Piggly Wiggly I said hi.
Snake Alley Song of the Day: The Kooks - See the Sun
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