Letters In A Bottle

What do Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, Che Guevara, a high-school term paper, an A-plus, and an FBI background investigation have in common?

The answer begins in today's episode of Good Morning, John Q.

Letters in a Bottle is the first installment of a three-part story that starts with a curious teenager looking for extra credit and ends in places neither he nor the FBI could have imagined. Along the way are Cold War dictators, family secrets, religious guilt, political irony, and one very bad idea that somehow turned into a very good grade.

The story is completely true.

Which is unfortunate, because no fiction writer would ever dare pitch it.

This is Part One.

And trust me—the strangest parts haven't happened yet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning, John Q. This is the United States of Amnesia broadcasting today as every day from somewhere between memory and forgetfulness. Today's headline Letters in a Bottle. You know, John Q, I was listening to a radio program this morning about how students are using AI for schoolwork, like writing papers. And the more I listened, the more it struck me that we've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. Need help with your homework? Ask AI. Need somebody to do your homework? Ask AI. Need help pretending you did the homework. Who are you gonna call? And listening to all of this, it struck me that something important had changed. Not the technology, the attitude. You see, when I was a student, I wasn't looking for a way to avoid the work. Well, at least not always. Of course I was looking for a way to avoid the work. Every kid looks for a way to avoid the work. But it was the work. My father went to work, I went to work. That was my job. Or at least that's how my father put it, right before he whacked me with his belt when I didn't do the work. And on top of that, I was Jewish, which is not exactly a guilt-free experience. As far as I could tell, guilt came standard equipment, factory installed, part of the operating system. Then I discovered there was an even greater source of guilt out there in the world. A more cosmic form of guilt. Something they called original sin. And there it was, just sitting out there, mine for the taking. Like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Which to be honest is probably why I became a Catholic. And to this day still feel guilty about that. But I digress. Despite the fact that curiosity killed the cat, I was the kind of kid for whom curiosity was an occupational hazard. I wanted to know how things worked, why people did what they did, what made them tick. And that curiosity finally caught up with me my junior year in high school when I was given a term paper to write. It was 130 grade, an important paper. The kind of paper that could make your year a lot better or a lot worse. But I wasn't afraid of it. I I did the research. I read the books, I took the notes. What interested me was the subject the power, the dictators of the world, the men who helped shape the Cold War. Now, if I wanted to study dictators today, it wouldn't be that much of a challenge. I just went up until about 3 a.m. in the morning and watched the 50 or so tweets coming out of the Oval Office. Back then, however, I had to look overseas. So I did. Now here's where the story takes an interesting turn. You see, I wasn't trying to avoid the work. I'd already done the work. Like I said, I did the research, read the books, took the notes, and wrote the paper. In other words, I baked the cake. All I was looking for was the icing. I wasn't looking for an A. I was looking for a guaranteed A. And then I remembered the old biblical expression cast your bread upon the waters. So I decided to cast a few letters upon the waters instead. Three letters, three bottles, three messages sending out into the world to see what might wash back ashore. One to Fido Castro, one to Nikita Cruise Chef, and one to Che Rivera. I think it was simple. If even one of them wrote back, I was probably looking at an A, maybe even an A plus. Well lo and behold, would you believe? All three of them wrote back. One from Fidel, one from Nikita, and one from Che, including boxes of instructions on how to overthrow the government of the United States. Now remember, I was a teenager. To me this wasn't subversion, it was extra credit. I turned in the paper, the letters, the boxes, the whole package, and I got an A. Mission accomplished. Or so I thought at the time. Little did I know those letters and boxes would come back to haunt me a short time later. You see, the following year I applied to one of the military academies. As it turns out, corresponding with Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Cheek Waver is not exactly considered an asset when the FBI comes calling to conduct a background check. Neither, for that matter, is having an uncle who happened to be the vice president of the Communist Party in the Eastern Bloc country. So if you want to find out what happened, stay tuned until tomorrow, and I'll let you know. A word to the wise. Truth is a virtue, amnesia is sin. Remember.