Instead of glancing at their cellphones or GameBoys while walking around the streets, everyone would be furtively eyeing the trees, searching for evidence of that crevice or fissure that might hold a secret treasure.
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I didn't have a lot of friends in middle school, so I might have run out of friends to target for passing the letters along.
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Occasionally I would open a letter from a camp friend to find it didn't have news, just a request to be part of a chain.
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I didn’t like chain letters but didn’t want to wimp out either. I always held out hope that something good would come from them. If I got one, I sent it on to girls from my cabin from the previous summer. Interlochen provided us with addresses of all who had attended each year. But, like a giant Ponzi scheme, nothing materialized.

With the advent of social media, chain letters cropped up online: don’t break the chain – its bad luck. I’d dutifully send it on to 10 friends. Finally I stopped. They are annoying. I don’t forward things on Facebook. I’m done.

#RetroFlash – 100 words