The Adventure Of The Birthday Card

Yesterday afternoon I put a birthday card in someone's mail-box. I have no idea who the mail-box belonged to, but I did it anyway.

I didn't just decide on the spare of the moment to stop in the middle of the street and dump a card in some totally unknown person's mail-box. No, this was pre-meditated. This was a deliberate and previously thought out act. It wasn't, however, a practical joke. This was an act of desperation.

A group of us at church had signed this ill-fated birthday card for a friend. We had it ready in plenty of time the week before his birthday and I was charged with making sure the card reached it's intended destination. He wasn't in church that Sunday, but no problem - I could get his house number from someone during the week. Sadly, no one knew his house number.

Yesterday I missed the poor boy again. By this time he had already had his birthday two days ago. I was certain of one thing - I was not going to carry the birthday card around in my bag from week to week on the off-chance of meeting him somewhere and being able to deliver the card. I might not bump into him for weeks, in which case I might as well throw the card away. It was time to take the situation firmly into my own hands.

A number of months ago the same group of us who had signed the birthday card had been going out for a meal. We went past the birthday-boy's house to collect him on our way. We knew the street, but not the house number. Even if we had known the house number, we didn't know which flat he lived in. Thankfully, it was a very small street and we had the choice of only about four houses. It was decided that ringing the bell of every flat, in all four houses until we found the right one might not be the best way to go about it. As no one thought of phoning him, another option was decided on. I am still not convinced that it was any better then ringing on all the door-bells in the street.

We all stood in a row on the sidewalk, looked up at the houses and shouted his name at the tops of our voices. Let me qualify that - everyone else shouted his name at the tops of their voices while I stood there laughing too hard to say anything. We got a lot more than we deserved. It would have served us right if everyone on the street had stuck their heads out of their windows and stared at us. Instead, the boy in question threw open his window and sticking his head out of the window shouted down: "What are you doing?!" Good question.

I didn't know all those months ago that I would shortly be needing to deliver a birthday card to the exact same location, otherwise I would most definitely have been careful to memorize both the flat and house number for future reference. I didn't know that I would ever need such a piece of information, so I didn't memorize it. We learn from our mistakes.

Yesterday afternoon I drove by the street and stood on the sidewalk, trying to envisage standing there with my friends a while back; trying to envisage the direction we were facing when we shouted; trying to envisage out of which head the window had popped. Eventually I plumped on a house and stood before the row of mail-boxes. I tilted my head to one-side and screwed up my nose, trying to work out which flat was the right flat. A couple of girls walked up the street and looked at me, obviously wondering why I was studying a couple of mail-boxes with such intensity. I decided not to explain - it might have got kind of confusing.

I really had not got much idea which flat belonged to the the boy who's already-late birthday card I was taking such pains to deliver. In the end, I decided I would have to trust to human kindness. I guessed at a mail-box, thrust the card inside and walked back to the car. I am hoping that if it ended up in the wrong mail-box, the person who found it knew the person it was intended for, and transferred it to the correct box. If there are two people with the exact same name living in side-by-side flats, then someone is going to be very confused.

That would make two of us.