Chain Letter

To whom it may concern,

If you have received this letter, you have seven days to rewrite and send it to three other people. If you do not do this you will befall a terrible curse. I urge you to find three people and send it to them. I have seen what happens when someone ignores this talisman! I assure you it is not good! 

**One woman in Ohio fell dead immediately upon the seventh day. 

**Another woman came within one Railroad of winning Safeway Monopoly, only to settle for a mere $12,000! 

**A divorced man in Boston completed the letter but, in that last moment before mailing, received a right-swipe on Tinder and forgot all about it. Two hours later he was making out in a secluded booth at the Denny's when his ex-wife walked in. She quickly turned and ran out. The scene upset her so much that she secretly cyber-stalked him for days, learning his patterns, only to run into him by "chance" at the grocery store. 

She just happened to be wearing the same jeans, sweatshirt and blue bandanna he would recall from long ago, when they bought their first house, when they painted all the rooms different colors. He'd held the ladder as she climbed to paint around the sconces and she knew he liked the view. They'd made love on the hardwood floor between unopened boxes as young lovers will. But something was different about this version of her, at the grocery store. Her outfit was folksy, to be sure, but her hair, nails and makeup were immaculate! It was as if she was attempting to be as beautiful as possible while wearing the trappings of his nostalgic past. 

And it worked! Seven days later they re-married at city hall. Not only that, They are still married some twenty-seven years later! They have two children, a dog named Buckley and a Prius! They attend church and are active in their community! He has a riding mower with a drink-holder and on Saturdays he slowly sips Coors Light from it as he mows the lawn and she writes strongly-worded emails to retail shops that have deeply failed to live up to her expectations! He's allowed two Coors Lights, but often he sneaks a third!

Later, after supper's detritus in cleaned and the kids are put to bed with a quick story, he reaches across the vast cosmos of the duvet and seeks out her distant body, a lonely astronaut aching for home. But she rolls farther away. She is sleeping. Or faking sleep. Either provides the same result. And so he lays on his side watching her shape as it gently rises and falls with breath and thinks. He thinks about his blessings, his kids, his Prius. He thinks about the fortune his family has had as others have struggled. Finally, just before sleep pulls him into dreams he can never remember upon waking, he thinks about Tammy...in the secluded booth at the Denny's. The reflection of a familiar face in the window entering and immediately leaving. The knowing of a lie and the playing along anyway. Twenty-seven years! I wonder, he thinks fondly. I wonder what ever happened to Tammy.

**A tug boat pilot failed to resend this letter and was hit on the head by a Coors Light can as he passed under the drawbridge at midnight! It left a perfectly circular bruise on his forehead!

Rewrite and send this letter to three people within seven days!  You've been warned!