A Reddit user has shared the bizarre story of a letter that arrived almost two years late—long after the event it was meant to announce.
Posting to the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, u/uropinionisdumb revealed that a letter mailed to them in November 2023 finally showed up at their house this week.
Newsweek reached out to u/uropinionisdumb via Reddit. We could not verify details of the case.
In the post, the envelope was clearly stamped with the date “20 Nov 2023,” providing proof of its long detour.
The problem? The letter wasn’t just junk mail. It was an invitation.
In the comments, the original poster said: “It was an invitation to my brother-in-law’s surprise 40th birthday. He’s 42 in December. Broke my heart to break the news to my sister that we weren’t going to be able to make it lol.”
At the time of writing, the post has received more than 12,000 upvotes and over 180 comments.
Many users commiserated over the delay, many joking about the United States Postal Service and the mysteries of lost mail.
“This is snail mail on a whole new level,” one user wrote.
A mailman even jumped into its defense. “It might have slipped into a crevice in a truck, or the machines at the plant, or some other thin orifice,” they offered.
“Someone finally cleaned under a machine or had one apart to maintain it and it got tossed back on the line,” another suggested.
Others swapped their own horror stories of letters and packages arriving months—or even years—after being sent.
“Something similar happened when I planned my dad’s 51st birthday party a couple years ago (not 50th because of COVID). A couple I had invited call me up like a month before his 52nd birthday to RSVP. I was confused until they started describing the invitation, then I had to laugh and tell them they’d missed the party by about 11 months,” one user commented.
Another user who shared their mom passed away in 2022. Their grandmother phoned her in 2024 to tell them she had received a card in the mail from their late mom, who had mailed it back in 2020.
“It was sent to my apartment I was living at 3 hours away but got lost so was sent back to sender—4 years later, my mom had already passed but luckily, it’s a small town and the mail man knew who my grandma was and delivered it to her. My mom had sent it when I was going through a rough patch, it was a card telling me how proud she was of me and how I was going to do great things. I received it when I truly needed it and I treasure it forever. But yeah, mail can get lost for a really long time!”
While the birthday surprise itself is long past, the OP’s family at least got one more funny story out of it. As one commenter put it: “Better late than never.”
Read the full article here
