Message in a Film Canister

     On September 8, 2012, hiker Larry Wright found a message in a film canister while hiking in Sequoia National Park.  Mr. Wright began looking for Tim Taylor, the 13 year old boy who wrote the message in 1972.  
http://news.yahoo.com/hike-becomes-quest-writer-decades-old-letter-193624434--abc-news-topstories.html
By October 8, 2012, Larry Wright and Tim Taylor, now a 53 year old San Diego County Superior Court judge, had connected, thanks mostly to the story getting out on the internet.  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/10/hikers-note-brings-two-families-together-40-years-later.html  Since the mountain peak where Mr. Taylor left his message, and Mr. Wright found it, is unnamed, Mr. Taylor was hoping that it might be designated Taylor-Wright Peak.  That would be nice.
     People have been tossing messages into the unknown for more than 2,000 years.  The Greeks tossed messages in bottles into the Mediterranean in 310 B.C.  They wanted to prove that the Mediterranean Sea was fed by waters from the Atlantic Ocean.  The English navy used messages in bottles to report sensitive military information.  Queen Elizabeth I established the position of "Uncorker of the Ocean Bottles," making it a crime, punishable by death, for anyone but the Uncorker to open these military communiqués.  The oldest message in a bottle ever found was thrown into the ocean in 1914 and discovered 98 years later in 2012.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_in_a_bottle
     Modern communication has made the world a smaller, knowable place.  Bottle lobbing (or film canister dropping) is a romantic activity these days - people just want to connect with other people.  Here are some very interesting stories of what can happen when we rely on the cosmos to make a connection:  http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/36541.html     Literature, movies, and music have used the bottle tossing theme.  Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel titled Message in a Bottle, and Kevin Costner played the lead in the movie based on the book.  The Police had their first hit song in 1979.  You guessed it - "Message in a Bottle."
     If you are a traditionalist and you need a few pointers, there is a website that teaches how to properly prepare a bottled dispatch.  http://www.ehow.com/how_4431974_send-message-bottle.html  On the other end of the spectrum, there is Virtual Ocean, a website that allows you to cast your message into their site, Facebook, and Twitter.  From there, it's anybody's guest who might pick it up.  Some people scrawl messages on bathroom walls.  Others write on dollar bills.
     I like the idea of sending messages up attached to helium filled balloons.  It's a game of chance, and I think balloon messages might have a better chance of being found.  I found just such a balloon a few years back.  I put fear of ticks aside and crawled into some shrubs along the side of the road to retrieve a deflated yellow balloon.  The attached tag contained information that this balloon was released by a second grader at a Pennsylvania school.  There was a request that the finder return the tag along with naming the location where the balloon landed.  Also requested - the name of the finder's favorite book.  I began to feel the heavy weight of adult responsibility.  What should I say was my favorite book?  When we were kids in Sunday School, we were strongly encouraged to say our favorite book was the Bible.  To have said that when I was a child would have been a lie, and it would be just as big a lie to say it as an adult.  Second graders are smarter than when I was a kid.  They don't read that boring Dick, Jane and Sally stuff.  They have probably grown tired of the Dr. Seuss books they have been hearing since their daycare days.  What book could I, an adult, select to which a second grader could relate?  I decided to say my favorite book was the dictionary.  All you need to use the dictionary is a little phonics background to help in locating words.  This lexicon would shed meaning on the many words a second grader might not know.  It would contain proper spelling, synonyms, and antonyms.  The dictionary could be used for playing word games with friends.  I decided to let the kids figure this one out on their own: the dictionary was a place where you could obtain juvenile amusement by looking up words like "ass" and "damn."
     I enjoyed this opportunity to be someone's cosmic muffin.  The dictionary is still my favorite book.  I use it for just about every blog entry.  These days it contains a lot more slang and swear words.  I'll bet you can find the definition of "wussy" in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster.