Did you know that the history of the chain letter can be traced back to the mid-1700s? There’s even an apocryphal story that Jesus was the first chain letter writer. It could also be argued that the chain letter is the earliest example of what we now know as crowd-sourcing like GoFundMe as they were used to raise money for so-called good causes. Regardless of who or what originated the notion, early chain letters usually came with some sort of promise having to do with luck. If you broke the chain, you would have bad luck, but if you kept it going, you would receive...something.
The first chain letter I received was when I was a sixth grader. It came from a pen pal of mine in Illinois. Although I can’t recall all the specifics, the letter threatened me with bad luck (whatever my imagination conjured that to mean) if I didn’t do what it said within three days. Don’t break the chain, it warned. I had to do it or else...bad luck! And I didn’t want bad luck.
To keep the chain going, I had to do four things:
1. Send a picture postcard to the name at the top of the list at the end of the letter.
2. Type (or handwrite) six copies of the letter leaving off the top name and adding my own name to the bottom.
3. Send the six letters to six friends.
4. Wait to receive hundreds of postcards from all over the world—the good luck.
My mom was a trained secretary having worked as one before I was born. She knew shorthand and was a touch typist. Her state-of-the-art Royal Luxe manual typewriter was usually strictly off limits, but Mom thought the chain letters a good opportunity for me to learn how to type. She showed me how to insert the paper, demonstrated how hard I needed to press the keys, how to shift to capital letters, use the spacebar, and push on the return lever to move to the next line on the page. She then let me have at it.
I hunted. I pecked. I backspaced to correct. I painstakingly mashed the keys that matched the characters in the chain letter to create a copy. The first one must have taken me hours. And it was a wreck of a finished product. Daunted but undeterred, I started the second one. Carbon paper would have cut the job in half, but I expect it was expensive, and besides, I’m sure Mom thought it a good project to keep me busy for a very long time.
Indeed, a long time is exactly what it took. I just barely got all the letters typed in the allotted three-day window. I suppose I sent one to a couple cousins, maybe to another one of my other penpals, and I definitely gave one to a classmate or two.
Mom took me up to the little card store nearby and I purchased a picture postcard of Lake Michigan. I wrote a little greeting on it, placed a postcard stamp in the corner, and sent it to the name of the first person on the letter I had received. I think I may have been a day or two late getting the postcard in the mail, because I forever afterwards thought that doing so is what had brought me...bad luck. For, alas, I received but one postcard as a result of my efforts.
I probably received similar chain letters during the rest of my youth, but after that first experience, I was willing to gamble the chance of getting a different kind of bad luck for I never typed or wrote another chain letter.
During my adulthood, chain-like “opportunities” cropped up from time-to-time, in most of which I did not participate. There are too many to recall, but I do remember participating in the sourdough bread starter one. That was kind of fun until I realized I really didn’t have the time in our busy lives to make sourdough bread. Was there a scented candle exchange? And I think I read about a naughty nightie one.
In the past month or so, as we have been practicing social and physical distancing, and adhering to shelter in place requests, the chain letter, or rather, chain email, has proliferated. I almost participated in the first one I received, which was a recipe-sharing chain. It required one to send a favorite recipe to the first of only two names on the list, but to then share it with 20 friends. I sent the recipe, and then copied the text I would then send to 20 of my contacts. I think I got to selecting the fifth person before coming to my senses. First of all, I didn’t need recipes. I rarely cook any longer, and when I do, I have a slew of old standbys, multiple cookbooks to consult, and the weekly Food section of the New York Times. So I, instead, wrote the person back to apologize but to state that I don’t do this sort of thing. I have since received that same email 5 more times. I have also received something similar asking for a poem/quote/thought to send along. I have refused all of them. So I guess I’m now officially a chain letter/email curmudgeon.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2020
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For a more complete history of the chain letter, please visit https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/87625/brief-history-chain-letter
http://pascalfroissart.online.fr/3-cache/2002-vanarsdale.pdf
