O.K., first a little background... I'm almost 50 years old. When I was around 8 or 10 I asked my mom for a Slinky for Christmas. Not an extravagant request and it was all I asked for that year. Well Christmas morning rolled around as it does every year and I ran down stairs to tear open the wrapping on my new Slinky but instead found a bow and arrow set under the tree. (I know what you're thinking , no I didn't shoot mom, these were kinder gentler times), Instead I just kept looking , but other than some new clothes, that was all there was, nothing more. I never did get that Slinky....
The years passed. No telling how that early dissappointment affected my life. Then In November of '95, I picked up the newspaper and read that, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Slinky, the company was producing a special 18K gold plated edition in a special box. Whoa!! after all those years the desire came flooding back. By coincidence(?), I received a call from mom asking us where she could send us some money for Christmas to which I replied "we don't need money, all I want is the Slinky you never got me!!" I explained all about the special edition and asked that she get me that for Christmas. Once again explaining," that's all I need nothing more." Feeling great, my childhood dream about to be fullfilled, I left with my wife for Laos and Thailand and a month's vacation. We returned to Japan in mid-January and when I had a chance to call mom, the first question I had was "Did you get my Slinky?" "Oh, I called the toy store and they didn't know what I was talking about", she replied. "I didn't think you were serious" (mom's don't get it, they never get it, do they?) Once again 40 years later, let down! But this time I was older, perhaps wiser, and I had the Net. I posted the above story to rec.toys.misc and to alt.toys.hi-tech (like I said there's a newsgroup for anything you can imagine out there somewhere, thank you Free Agent and Netscape), along with a plea for help in finding somewhere I could purchase a 50th anniversary commemorative Slinky. And, this is the great part of the story, I got responses. And it gets even better...
I received a reply from a lady named Barbara Williams. Yes, she'd seen the Slinky in Nordstroms which she explained was an upscale department store in Seattle and if I was still interested she'd go back and see if they still had any. I immediately answered that yes, I was interested and if she didn't mind going to the trouble yes, please, please check it out for me. First she called the Sharper Image as another reader of the newsgroup suggested but they had sold out before Christmas so she ran around Seattle, went to four Nordstroms before she finally found one that had only one left. Did I want her to purchase it for me? I sure did and unbelievably, because it was the last one, it was on sale! (50 rather than 80 bucks, remember we're talking 18K gold plated here, not your average Slinky!) So she bought the Slinky, I sent her the money for it, and she mailed it to me here in Tokyo.
By this time owning the Slinky had become a distant second in producing the joy I felt and the lift I received from the kindness shown me by a complete stranger. Just knowing that out there somewhere is a person who would go to all the trouble of phoning and running all over town to first find, then purchase, and finally go to the post office and mail a toy to someone she 'd never met makes me feel really, really great. She mentioned she has a couple kids so I guess maybe she knows what joy toys can bring to even 50-year-old kids.
I want to thank you for the good you've made me feel Barb by taking the time and the effort to do something nice for a stranger with no thought of anything in return. To take the time and make the effort to do what you did makes me look in facination at the Net and wonder at the effect these kinds of interactions in cyberspace are going to have on our planet. Once again thank you for bringing some amazement into my life. Oh yeah and thanks for the Slinky, I love it.