So we played a practical joke on my co-worker today and it’s probably a lot funnier if you work here, but I’ll share it anyway.

We used to work with a large, socially-awkward, lumberjack looking fellow from the U.P. who we called Eggs. He had a crush on another of my co-workers, we’ll call her Pocahontas because she’s Indian (dots, not feathers). He expressed it in a junior high schoolboy, Pedobear kind of way.

Anyway, as a joke on Pocahontas, we wrote a fake love letter, Photoshopped an engagement picture and sent it to her via a fake e-mail address. The letter is below:

My dearest Pocahontas,

Please forgive the impersonal nature of sending such an important message via e-mail, for it’s quite urgent. I decided that the immediacy of the Internet mixed with my fear that if I hand wrote this, the extremely heartfelt sentiment and feelings would be lost in the illegible abyss of the chicken scratch that is my handwriting necessitated its delivery in this manner. It’s so important that you understand and take to heart each word I write, because this truly comes from the depth of my soul.

It’s been quite some time since we’ve talked, and yet my heart aches more with each passing day. Our time together was so fleeting, though it seems like just yesterday we were sharing a laugh over a beer at Club Baseview. When I close my eyes, I can still see your beautiful smile, like the brightest stars in the north Punjab sky. It’s a vision that, no matter how hard I try, will never go away.

I must confess that I’ve found someone new, a woman who makes me happy and is good for me in so many ways. She’s incredible, and because I’m scared that the chances of me finding someone so wonderful are limited, I’ve decided I can’t pass this opportunity up. My beautiful Pocahontas, we’ve decided to get married.

I know it’s a huge step, and yet I still have this feeling like she’s not truly the one for me. That special place in my heart is reserved for you. Say the word, my dearest Pocahontas, and I’d give it all up this very second — my fiance’, my job at the landfill — anything you want, I’d do it for you.

I know this must all come as a surprise to you, finding out that I have feelings for you like this. I know that I should have said something when we were together. I know that the odds of me being with someone as amazing as you are worse than a possum’s in a grizzly bear fight. I know this is nothing more than the desperate plea of a man in love, but I just had to get this off of my chest before I resign myself to a life of contentment masked as domestic bliss.

I fear, my radiant Pocahontas, that my fiance’ is the one for me, but that you are the RIGHT ONE for me. A man only gets a chance like this once in a lifetime, to tell the woman he loves how he feels and hopes, just prays, that she feels the same way. I’m sure you don’t, I’m sure that this is nothing more than some Sisyphusian task in futility, but I’d live for 1,000 years and still never get over the pain of regret if I didn’t tell you somehow.

I don’t know what to expect from this. I’m almost certain that you’ll hide this away from everyone, relegating this letter to the trash bin or shredder and the memory of it to your darkest nightmares. Yet there’s a thin glimmer of hope, if only in my most sublime dreams, that you’ll somehow show up on my doorstep and we’ll run away, and live happily ever after. It’s a fairytale, to be sure, and I know it won’t happen. At least now you know what’s in my heart, and I’ll always have that dream. It’s a dream that will keep me looking over my shoulder always, hoping you’ll be there.

Forever yours,

Eggs

P.S. I hope it’s not too forward of me, but I took the liberty of using Photoshop to put the two of us together based on a picture I found of you on Facebook, just so I can imagine how happy the two of us would look together.