WRITING CHALLENGE |WEIRDNESS

The Weirdest Thing I Believed As A Kid

Mini me and the stolen letter

Photo by Maxim Makarov on Unsplash

Read for free

I’d never shared this story. Like ever. And I thought there had been an unsaid agreement between me and my partner-in-crime to never speak of this again. Oh, why must we bury ourselves in the sand of humiliation rather than where we already are?

Anyway… Here we go…

Please keep in mind that we were just kids back then. Kids were… innocent, right? Naive, you might say. We believed in anything — almost. And we were more easily threatened.

We were in elementary school, 3rd or 4th grade (I can’t remember precisely). And we liked to walk home from school. We pretended to be adventurers. Our fantasy world was built along the road from school to our house. Roads, trees, plants, and even cats were part of our stories. We thought we were fearless — or maybe not so much. Basically, two chicken nuggets pretending to be dragons.

Kids (Uhm, maybe just me and my friend, hahaha…) loved brochures. Like for real. When we found free newsletters, ads for laundry services, car rentals, department-store brochures, or even ads for dentures, we collected them all. We folded them into paper planes, sailing boats, paper cranes, frogs, or just read them along our long walks.

But on that eventful day, we didn’t just find a boring, ordinary piece of paper. Yeah. We found a chain letter. Folded neatly and tucked in between brochures. Fate took its turn to play with us — for stealing brochures.

Cold ran down our spines as we digested each sentence with fear.

At the beginning, the letter talked about the fortunes and wealth we could get if we followed the instructions written in the letter. Basically, to copy and pass the chain letter to other people. From there, things turned grim.

It said about diseases, curses, death, and horrific consequences for those who didn’t replicate and spread the letter. And of course, we believed that. Like I said, innocent, right? Or maybe we were just two idiots on their worst day.

All that was written there somehow seemed believable in our mini-minds.

We didn’t want death, right? We feared the grave danger if we dared not follow its instructions.

I couldn’t remember exactly how many letters we needed to replicate that day. Ten? Twenty? Let’s just settle on twenty.

Then the real problem occurred. We. Didn’t. Have. Much. Money. Left. Hooray!

Our money was only enough to copy half the amount it requested. Well, it was after school — we had spent our money on sweets and all kinds of food that even a cat wouldn’t want to touch. We were financially broke after school.

And we thought, if we at least replicated half of it, we would be fine, right? It would be a break-even number. An offset. Sure, we wouldn’t get the fortune, but we at least avoided the danger. The death.

According to our exceptionally peculiar minds, we had done the perfect math.

We copied the letters, tucked them into random houses. The trouble was over, and it became somebody else’s misery. If anyone would be stupid enough not to ignore — or better, rip — the letter.

I actually had to hold my laughter because I wrote this in a coffee shop, and I imagined the face of the photocopy guy who copied those chain letters. Did he read it? Did he secretly and devilishly laugh inside when he saw two idiot kids copying that stupid letter? Never… mind…

We put those letters in random people’s mailboxes anyway.

The questions are: Are you sure I’m sane enough to even be here, sharing my stories with you? Because at this point, I’m not.

Now that you know this, do you still think I’m the smart girl? I wasn’t and still am not. Hahaha.

Maybe I still have those idiotic and insane thoughts in my mind. Maybe that’s the best ingredient — rich in the nutrition of my fictional story. Turns out chaos is my creative fuel. From the craziness inside of Me(ta).

I’m tagging my sister, Vaidehi. Thanks for passing the challenge and also tagging the challenge bringer, Vaishnavi Y, and my amazing cupcake godmother, Rishita Sharma💗.

*This story joins The Weirdest Thing I Believed as a Child, a writing challenge by Quirky Rants — celebrating the hilarious, heart-melting, and downright bizarre beliefs that shaped our tiny childhood worlds. From moon-chasing skies to tree-growing stomachs, this prompt brings back the magic of the curious little humans we once were.** Find the prompt below!***

[embed]THE WEIRDEST THING I BELIEVED AS A CHILD — A Writing Challenge Weird Beliefs & Fun Stories that Shaped Our Childhoodmedium.com

📌 This story is published under Quirky Rants — a home for unfiltered thoughts, everyday oddities, and real, relatable voices. Want to share your story too? Join us here.

[embed]Quirky Rants — A Publication! Unfiltered opinions on everyday oddities!medium.com