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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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A father on his death bed passes his 15yr old son a letter and makes him promise to give it to his employers, but to never read the letter himself. The son makes his promises and the father duly dies.
At 16, the boy's first job is on a building site. One morning high up on a scaffold, working alongside the site foreman, he remembers the letter and explains to the foreman that he promised his father to pass him the letter. The foreman reads the letter and instantly sees red, and pommels seven bells out of the poor lad, before sacking him and throwing him off the scaffold with his letter. The boy recovers after six months in hospital. At 17 the boy decides to join the army, and one day out on training he passes the letter to his squad sergeant, after telling him the tale of his promise. Not only does the sergeant read it, but he passes it to everyone in the squad, who all erupt in temper and knock the stuffing out of him, then uses his for target practise The boy is forced out of the army along with his letter, and recovers in hospital. At 18 he joins the RAF with the same outcome after handing over the letter to his superiors; and so it carries on year after year job after job, and still he does not read the letter. When he turns 28 he decides to join the Navy and in the middle of the Atlantic he remembers the letter, and passing it over to his immediate superior, explains the promise made to his father. The letter is duly passed around the frigate and every beats the proverbial out of him, after which he is put in a dinghy with three days rations and his letter and set adrift. Having exhausted his rations, and himself at death's door by now, on the fourth day he looks up to the sky and says, "Father, I know that I promised that I would never read the letter you gave me for my employers; but it has given me grief my whole career so far. I am sorry father, but I must break this promise." And having said so, he duly takes the envelope out of his pocket, takes out the letter and carefully unfolds it; but, as he is about to read the letter and find out why he gets beaten up in every job he goes to, a wind comes along and blows it out of his hand.
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