MONTROSE HARBOR — In a disappointing coda to a would-be moment of catharsis, the cherished necklace cast into Lake Michigan by a nonagenarian is sitting placidly atop a layer of ice.
“This necklace was given to me at Mardi Gras in 1942,” said Violet Tamagotchi, 96, staring down at the frigid waters. “It was given to me by the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, but who turned out to be a ventriloquist dummy dressed up as Abraham Lincoln. I gave him everything I had, and I’ve carried that weight with me in those beads for eighty years.”
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“Today, I was planning on finally casting that weight off and letting him go,” Tamagotchi said. “But I guess the ice had other plans.”
Though the lake never fully freezes over, due to it being really big and having too many lake trout running high temperatures year round, during the colder months the waters of Chicago’s shoreline have been known to solidify.
“You have to pick your moment,” said lake enthusiast Patrick Gar, 35. “Dramatic moments are best executed in October or April, when the lakefronts aren’t teeming with swimmers and the waters are ready to receive plot-rich trinkets.”
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For the elderly population clamoring to purge possessions loaded with complicated memories, however, there is no time like the present. “I’m 96 years old,” said Tamagotchi, striding down the beach with a determined air. “It’s a miracle I didn’t die in the Hindenburg, or when I totaled my car at Outback Steakhouse. You think I’m going to wait three more months to actualize my lifelong dream of throwing these beads that I hate into the big lake by my house? Dream on.”
Tamagotchi was later seen yelling at a reluctant seagull to peck a hole in the ice on her behalf.
