MESSAGE FROM 1986

I woke up today, my apartment still smelling of Easter ham, and read this headline:
"1986 Message in Bottle Drifts 1,735 Miles".

Intrigued, I read further:

SEATTLE - Merle Brandell and his black lab Slapsey were beachcombing along the Bering Sea when he spied a plastic bottle among the Japanese glass floats he often finds along the shore of his tiny Alaskan fishing village.
He walked over and saw an envelope tucked inside. After slicing the bottle open, Brandell found a message from an elementary school student in a suburb of Seattle. The fact that the letter traveled 1,735 miles without any help from the U.S. postal service is unusual, but that's only the beginning of the mystery.

About 21 years passed between the time Emily Hwaung put the message in a soda bottle and Merle Brandell picked it up on the beach.

"This letter is part of our science project to study oceans and learn about people in distant lands," she wrote. "Please send the date and location of the bottle with your address. I will send you my picture and tell you when and where the bottle was placed in the ocean. Your friend, Emily Hwaung."

Now, apparently, Emily did not write the message. All the kids used the same type-written message and simply signed their names to the letters.

THIS IS A CRYING SHAME.

I'd much prefer to read the contents of personal 1986 messages from 4th graders, to give some real flavor from that year.
Some of them might read like this:

1. Corey Feldman rules!

2. My friend Trish has a Care Bears Trapper Keeper. She is such a dweeb.

3. Mom got me a Walkman and the new Cyndi Lauper tape for my birthday. She's way cooler than Madonna. You can totally tell she's the one who people will still like even when we're in high school and stuff.

4. Our teacher said that in the future, they will put like, a whole library of stuff on like, one computer chip. There's no way, right?

5. There's this boy Ryan who totally likes me. And me and Jill played MASH, and it said that me and Ryan are gonna get married and live in a mansion and drive a Ferrari. It could happen.