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If it was a movie, it would be based on a book by Nicolas Sparks or Cecelia Ahern. If it was a movie, we'd roll our eyes. How saccharine. How unbelievable, we'd say. But the best part about how a message in a ginger ale bottle found its way home after sailing the high seas for a dozen years is that it's absolutely true.
What makes the story even more poignant is that the bottle's sender was none other than Sidonie Fery, a 10-year-old girl who would later die in a cliff accident in Switzerland.
Little did she know that the bottle would rock up amidst the seaside debris from hurricane Sandy, about 95kms east of Manhattan.
“I was just sobbing when I heard they had found it,” said her grieving mother Mimi Fery, who could not believe workers found and returned the bottle. Another happy ending to come out of an unspeakable disaster.
And the fateful message was not Shakespeare but no less poetic, taken from Sidonie's favourite film, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure:
“Be excellent to yourself, dude. It makes so much sense,” which Fery interpreted as Sidonie telling her mother not to worry about her.
According to the article in the Globe and Mail, Sidonie was described as a "vivacious young woman ... with an independent streak." She had been studying in Europe when she died tragically at the age of 18.
But fate has a funny/stubborn way of getting its point across, and so parks workers in charge of the post-Sandy cleanup managed to trace Fery since Sidonie included in the note a New York City phone number.
Fery later arranged to meet the workers, in order to claim her miraculous memento. A memorial plaque to the girl will be placed on site to mark the find.
“[Fery] was crying," recalls one of the workers, Brian Waldron, "everybody was crying.”
No doubt. It makes so much sense...