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We send out of bunch of Christmas cards. I prepare them in large batches, dozens at a time. I’ll print a bunch of envelopes with addresses, then I’ll stuff them and seal them, then I’ll stamp them. Kind of like a one-man assembly line.

I was in the middle of addressing the envelopes and realized that one particular person had moved and I didn’t have her new address. Since I knew we would be seeing her in a couple of days and I could just hand her the envelope, I wrote “Some New Address” for the address line. I still wanted to address the envelope so that I could check it off the list and we would remember whom it was for.

But I made the mistake of keeping it in the stack of other envelopes. So it continued in the assembly line. It got stuffed, sealed, and stamped. And then mailed. I didn’t realize my mistake until a few hours later.

When we saw her later, I recounted what happened. I figured either the post office would somehow realize it needed to forward the letter to her new address or it would get returned to us for a bad address.

A week came and went. Christmas came and went. Then New Year’s. The letter finally was returned to us last week, over a month after it was mailed.

If you have something with critical timing, make sure you get the address correct. Because if it’s undeliverable, you might not know for a while.