1947: The Postcard Chain
From my cousin Ruthie in Bangor, Maine. I was eleven.

Send a picture postcard of your town to the girl at the top of the list, cross her off, add your name at the bottom, and send copies to four friends. I dutifully mailed off a postcard of the State House dome and waited. Nine postcards came, from as far away as Oregon. I thought it was the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to anybody. In a way, I'm still collecting because of those nine postcards.

1953: The Frightening One
From a girl in my Sunday school class. I was seventeen.

A good-luck letter with a list of people who had broken the chain and what became of them: a lost job, a fall down the stairs, worse. I was terrified. My mother read it at the kitchen table, said "Nonsense," and put it in the stove. Nothing bad happened to either of us, except that I failed my driving test that week, and Mother said that was the clutch's fault, not the letter's. (I have kept a copy that a friend sent me later. For science.)

1958: The Handkerchief Exchange
From my aunt, the month after Walter and I were married.

Send one pretty handkerchief to the woman at the top of the list, and so on. I sent one with violets on it. Twenty-two handkerchiefs came back, and I still carry one of them to funerals. This is the only chain letter in the box that I will admit to having enjoyed completely.

1968: The Recipe Exchange
From a neighbor on our street.

Send your favorite recipe to the name at the top. I sent my mother's blueberry buckle. Fourteen recipes came back, three of them for the same tuna noodle casserole, in three different handwritings, each one claiming it was her own mother's.

1974: The Letter That Went Around the World
Typed on onionskin, from someone who did not sign it.

This was the famous one that claimed to have circled the globe several times, with its little catalog of the lucky and the unlucky. By then I was teaching, and I brought it to my eleventh-grade class the week we studied propaganda. We took it apart like any other primary source: who wrote it, who benefits, what does it want you to feel, and what evidence does it offer? The students decided it offered none. One boy asked if he could take it home to scare his sister. I said no.

1987: The Five-Dollar Chain
Photocopied, from a fellow teacher who shall remain nameless.

Send five dollars to each of the five names on the list and you would receive, in time, something like fifty thousand dollars. I showed it to our postmaster instead. My colleague did not speak to me until Easter. We are friends again now, and he agrees he was lucky it was me and not the principal who got a copy.

1996: My First Electronic One
Printed out for me by my son, who had just set up our computer.

A warning that a virus called Good Times would destroy the computer if one merely opened the message. It was, of course, a hoax, and a rather old one by then. My son was embarrassed. I was delighted. I printed it out on the new printer and put it in the box, which made it the first chain letter in the collection that had never touched a stamp.

1999: The Ten-Minute Warning
From my grandniece, age fifteen.

Forward this to ten people within ten minutes, or the boy you like will never like you back. At sixty-three, I have decided to take my chances. Walter says he likes me fine.