When I was 10 I wrote a letter to Santa. I spent 2 hours perfecting the letter. Every character was written carefully, all the words were lined up with a ruler. Punctuation was analyzed to the finest detail. Tone and formality was spot on. I knew that if I wrote the perfect letter he would no doubt give me what I wanted.

I lived 3 blocks away from the nearest post office box. No way was I going to just clip this on our mailbox. I was going to walk over and put in the blue steel box assuring myself that the US Post Office would deliver it safely and promptly.

It was a windy cold day. It was dusk and I knew the mailman was going to come at 5pm before he headed back to the office. As I walked up to the steel box a strong guest of wind came up behind me, the letter flew out of my hand and into the storm drain that was right under the mailbox.

I stood there dumbfounded. About to burst into tears because I knew that there in the drain was my perfect letter. One that would be impossible to recreate. I mean the artistry that I put into that letter was epic and plus I was late It was 2 days before Xmas. This was the final day to get letters out to Santa. So I did the most logical thing.

I climbed into the storm drain.

As I slowly descended into what was the most disgusting hell I had ever seen I thought to myself “you know Santa can see this, and he’s going to appreciate all of this effort.” It was probably just 6 feet that I climbed but to me it was the longest journey. I shuffled around in the drain for about 10 minutes until I found the letter. It was stained slightly from the nastiest that you find in a drain but it was intact and not completely soaked.

I climbed out exactly when the mailman drove up. Thinking that I was just about to miss the deadline I ran up to the mailman and handed my letter to him. He stared at me, then at the drain, shook his head and put in in his bag.

I walked home, stained but very proud.

To this day I have no idea what I asked for or if I even got the gift I requested. I just remembered that I absolutely, full-on believed in Santa and if I was 10 years old and had access to these NORAD videos I’d be hitting refresh every second to see when he’d be at my house.