Dr. NoSleep

At first, I didn't know whether to open it or not, considering that I had no relatives in or around the Kansas City area, and I had no memory of giving my address to anyone around there.

But after doing a quick field test and finding that what was inside was just a heavily folded up piece of paper, I decided there was no harm in opening it.

The letter itself was handwritten in shaky, uneven handwriting.

It was written in blue ink on the back of a faded takeout menu, as if someone had grabbed the first piece of paper they had on hand.

Whoever had written it was either old or had very poor grammar skills.

I say this because, in addition to the messy handwriting,

The letter mainly consisted of a combination of run-on sentences, short half-sentences, and disjointed rambling.

It was like someone was trying to write cohesively, but memory or lack of education made it impossible for them to keep track of their own thoughts.

Dear Alan,

I saw your post on the blog a couple days ago, and I wanted to let you know that yeah, America needs you was a real thing.

Happened in 85, maybe around the spring or early summer.

Probably in March, since those kinds of things gotta happen when it's real warm out, or else it don't work at all, see?

Ain't no good asking around about it, cause there's too many bad memories people got with it.

And we did what we did because it was what we had to do.

But still, good folks scream like the locusts are coming in when you mention it.

I don't think too many young people nowadays know about it.

And that's a damn good thing, people say.

My brother, he made sure we'd all live to see another day, and every damn day is a gift.

And we should all be grateful by not flapping our gums about it.

Hard to forget, even at my age.