A Postcard from Tony (who the heck is Tony‽)

For almost a year now, I’ve been actively soliciting Internet strangers to send me a postcard (in addition to the usual ways of contacting me, via comments or email). I had no idea it would be so-successful: I’ve received a postcard almost every month! I’ve been keeping them in a mildly-interactive gallery if you’d like to see.

Today was novel, though. Today, for the first time, I received a postcard from somebody… whom I can’t identify.

Composite photograph showing the front and rear of a postcard written on the plain brown cardboard bulk packaging of a Canadian boil-in-the-bag food product. — The postcard is from “Tony”. I’ve transcribed the full text on the postcards page.

The postcard is from “Tony”. So I can identify them that far. But… who the heck is Tony‽

In the case of every previous postcard I’ve received, it’s been somebody I’ve been able to “trace”: either because they’ve previously left a comment on my blog, or emailed me, or we’ve moved in the same circles of a (relatively small community) website, or they’ve included a URL or some other way to “find” them.

This one though, is a mystery.

Let me tell you my favourite thing about this postcard, though: it taught me something cool. The postcard is made out of the (billingual) outer packaging of some kind of MRE/boil-in-the-bag ration pack, and Tony tells me that when they were in the Canadian armed forces, their unit would send postcards like this “back home”: written directly onto the packaging.

How neat! If I had a family member in the services, it’d be neat to get a postcard from wherever they were deployed that not only told me how they were doing… but as a side-effect what they’d been having for dinner. It’s cute.

If you’re out there Tony, feel free to say hi in the comments or email, too. And thanks for the card!