You made me promise that I would give you nothing for your birthday this year. So here is a box containing 10 cubic feet of nothing.

Since nothing is sacred these days…I was unable to simply buy it at Wal-Mart or bid for it on E-Bay. Instead I was forced to engage in a great many financial, legal and political maneuvers in order to obtain enough nothing to give as a present to someone that I love and adore as much as I do you.

I was able to obtain 2.4 cubic feet of nothing by having it smuggled out of a Tibetan Monastery in 3 dozen small shipments. Bribing the border guards was no major expense but having to wash all the yak sweat off 36 individual pieces of nothing before I placed them in the gift box was definitely not my idea of a good time on a Saturday Night.

Since the fall of the USSR, numerous former Soviet officials have been attempting to make as much money as they can by offering deals on the black market. Many of their supposed deals (especially offers to exchange newly uncovered information for large sums of money) do tend to be a case of someone wanting to be paid large sums of money in exchange for nothing…but there are the instances where things do pan out.

I was able to get a line on a serious quantity of nothing that was confiscated by the KGB when they began to clamp down on the Russian Orthodox Church. It was locked up in an underground crypt near the Mad Monk Rasputin's empty grave. The three gallons of hot tea I'd been forced to imbibe, while negotiating for almost five hours with Colonel Imagoofoff, started turning to frozen slush in my veins with every strange noise and corner-of-the-eye movement while we tromped through the haunted cemetery. The Colonel turned the key in the massive lock; and as he opened the door, there was a wail that sent a shiver down my spine!

The Colonel refused to enter the crypt, and merely handed me a flashlight and a small card which contained the identification number of a crate. Inside I found various containers, but none whose labels matched the Cyrillic script on the card my erstwhile colleagues had provided me. In the far right hand corner I finally located the remains of a broken crate and a rusted iron box, holding 1.8 cubic feet of nothing. I don't know what else was in that crypt, and I'm not sure I would ever want to!

I managed to convince the Royal Shakespeare Company in London to donate 1.5 cubic feet of nothing that once belonged to the Bard himself. This particular piece of nothing has been sought after for centuries. As a matter of fact there was once much ado made over this nothing.

I also located several large pieces of nothing at political rallies recently but I was not able to use them as they were contaminated by the thick brown bovine something that usually covers political nothing.

Another major search flop was in Afghanistan. There had been reports of it containing tons of nothing. But upon detailed examination it was discovered that this was actually millions of women and girls who had been oppressed by the Taliban and treated as though they were nothing. I am happy to say that this sorry situation has improved greatly during the past two years.

Another 1.6 cubic feet of nothing was obtained from the education community. A high school teacher distilled a serious degree of nothing from the homework papers turned in by her students. And a college professor collected for me several significant pieces of nothing produced during the weekly faculty meetings.

Turning closer to home—actually in my own home—I managed to retrieve .8 cubic feet of nothing from my basement, .3 cubic feet of nothing from under my couch and .2 cubic feet of nothing from the very back of my refrigerator. Fortunately, that last little bit of nothing was sealed in a zipper bag, which protected it quite nicely from the mound of moss growing back there…or was that a bologna sandwich still left over from the Derby Party you attended a little more than a year ago?

Still my determined efforts had left me with only 8.6 of the 10 cubic feet of nothing which would be needed to completely fill the gift box. Having exhausted all of my other resources, I asked for help from some of my oldest and dearest friends. Laura, Ted, Archie, Maria and Cathy quickly rose to the occasion and achieved more nothing than I could ever have hoped for. Their speedy and eager responses immediately proved to me that nothing ventured is most certainly nothing gained.

Until this past week I would not have believed just how adept these five individuals could be at pondering nothing, creating nothing, discovering nothing and writing about nothing. Not only did I quickly reach 10 cubic foot mark…but I finally had to get down on my hands and knees and beg these people to stop focusing on nothing and get on with their lives.

So I sincerely hope you enjoy your nothing. It was probably the most unusual request I've ever had for a birthday gift. But I think you will agree that I managed to rise to the occasion.

Love and Best Wishes,
Samuel Travis Clemmons