For a Lark

“Happy Holidays” David said as he poked his head into my office, handing me an unwrapped holiday card featuring a kitten in a Santa hat. As I took it, I nearly dropped a small white envelope that slipped out from inside. The inscription in the card read simply “Best wishes, David – 2010.”

“Uh, thanks, you too!” I replied, both surprised and a bit uncomfortable that my colleague had gotten me a card. We were friendly but not friends. We’d only worked together a few times over the prior year, and it would’ve never occurred to me to get him anything for Christmas. He seemed like an archetypal geek, so we shared an interest in technology and science fiction, but we didn’t hang out or anything like that. Fortunately, he had a stack of cards in his hands, so it wasn’t like I’d been singled out or anything. Hoping he hadn’t gotten me anything fancy, I asked “What’s this?” as I flipped over the rigid envelope. In small print near the flap, it read “Do not open until Christmas 2017.”

His eyes twinkled and he grinned mischievously, an expression I’d never seen from him before. “Just a tiny gift. Well, maybe sort of a test. It’s very important that I give it to you now. But if you open it before 2017, it’ll be the crummiest gift you ever got. If you can wait, maybe it’ll be pretty nice.”

I furrowed my brow. “So, like some sort of Savings bond thing?” I asked, thinking back to the bonds I’d gotten from far-off relatives as a little kid… I’d recently stopped dragging them around from apartment to apartment and taken them to the bank to collect the princely sum of $261, two decades after I’d ungratefully wished they were some action figures or a book instead.

David smiled. “Sure, sorta. Don’t lose it. Don’t get it wet. And don’t open it early!”

“Uh, I won’t… Thanks?” I promised, and with that, David disappeared into Rob’s office next door to start his spiel all over.

Weird. Well, I’d already bought my direct reports gift cards for the IPic movie theatre and I had one extra left over… I’ll put that in a New Year’s card for David and leave it in his office sometime next week, I resolved. I tossed the card and envelope into the stack of RFC printouts on my bookshelf and went back to the email I was writing, hoping to get everything squared away before leaving for a short Christmas vacation.

The envelope sat on my bookshelf undisturbed, buried in an ever growing pile of paper. I might’ve remembered it the following year, but David had left the company that summer, off to do a volunteer tour with the Peace Corps before joining some startup out in San Francisco. Still buried in a pile of paper when I left the company two years later, the card made its way into an unsorted moving box labeled “office stuff” as we moved across the country to Texas. It then sat quietly in the box in my garage for five more years.

In the summer of 2017, I finally got around to digging through the garage, trashing what I could in an effort to make way for the growing proliferation of tricycles, big wheels, wagons, bikes, and pool toys that our two Texas-born children had collected. I spent a quiet Saturday afternoon in July mired in nostalgia, poring through boxes full of old books and papers and remembering a life before kids and so many responsibilities.

When I eventually uncovered the kitten card in the pile, I snorted and stretched to toss it in the “Recycle” pile before I remembered the weird little envelope. Sure enough, it was still inside, forgotten and untouched for the better part of a decade. I ignored the admonition of the faded green warning and tore it open, long-forgotten curiosity mounting.

The envelope contained a pile of papers folded in thirds. The outermost of these was a cleanly cut sheet of wax paper of the sort that was used for sandwiches back before ziplock bags took over the world. Odd, I mused as I discarded it. The next was a folded sheet of thick white cardstock, taped closed, which bore a short paragraph printed in Christmas-colored ink. It read simply:

Is it Christmas 2017 yet?

If so, happy holidays! Enjoy your present.
If not, please google ‘Marshmallow experiment’ and wait patiently.
You’ve been warned.

I paused as the marshmallow reference tickled something in my memory … some university lecture I’d forgotten long ago? Mildly annoyed, I dragged out my phone and searched as instructed. Oh yeah, that Stanford study about delayed gratification. It’s not like anyone will ever know… I mused as I put down my phone and started to peel back the tape holding the cardstock shut.

The door to the garage opened. “Nap’s over, Nate’s up.” my wife called, and I tossed the letter back in the box, eagerly grabbing the large pile of recycling I’d generated to show her my progress. Dancing around, building lego cars, and wrestling with my two kids, I completely forgot about David’s weird little present for another few months.

That December, off work for a two-week winter holiday vacation, I resolved to finish cleaning out the garage. Thirty minutes into the job, I came across the card. December… close enough. I tore open the cardstock. Inside lay a single laser-printed page with a letter printed on one side. The opening paragraph read:

Happy holidays, friend!

I hope you’ve waited patiently for this small gift and aren’t too annoyed at the oddity of its presentation, but it’s all for a purpose.

My accountant has instructed me to make it very clear that this is a GIFT, granted freely without any restrictions, from me to you on December 17th, 2010. It has an approximate market value of $250. Relax– it only cost me about 8 bucks, and it may well be worthless by the time you open it. (Market value is only possibly important for tax purposes)

Beneath the card was a black and white picture, one inch square, full of smaller squares, the sort of bar code you’ll find on the back of shampoo bottles.

The letter continued and I read on, confused but intrigued.

This is a QR code containing the private key for a digital wallet containing bitcoin. Bitcoins are a virtual currency that I’ve been playing with this year, and I thought it would be a lark to give some out as a present. (I’m not clever at picking presents– growing up, I got a new leather wallet every year for Christmas.)

Perhaps in 2017 bitcoins have become worthless (that seems like the most likely outcome), but I have a hunch that perhaps they’ll continue to appreciate over the years. If you’ve been patient, maybe it’s enough to buy you a nicer present now.

If so, happy holidays! If not, I hope my folly brings you at least a chuckle. :)

My heart started to pound in my chest. The page concluded with David’s signature, preceded by 7 hand-scrawled characters.

1000 BTC

Hands shaking with the instant weight of the letter, I dropped it and the universe entered slow motion as the paper fluttered to the ground.