Everyone’s heard of people writing messages and sticking them in bottles before casting them out to sea. This is for many reasons, including looking for love or just hoping to receive a friendly response from foreign lands. It turns out that the message in a bottle idea is old news these days – people are finding far more original ways to do the same thing.

18-year-old Hayley Robbins from Ashland, KY, had apparently been looking for love in all the wrong places when she decided to try a different tack. While visiting the beach, she wrote a message on a Softball with her name and cell phone number, asking any “cute guy” who found it to get in touch.

She then probably used an impressive throwing arm to cast it out into the ocean. Amazingly, six years later she got a response, but things weren’t as they first appeared.

Softball experiment at the beach

As reported by the Mirror Online, Robbins is the ultimate romantic and decided to let the universe do its thing to help her find the perfect mate. While visiting an unknown beach, she used an indelible marker to write her name and cell phone number onto a softball and then likely crossed her fingers before tossing it out to sea. The message asked “cute guys” to send her a text message to the provided number.

Message from ‘cute guy’ received 6 years down the line

Around six years have gone by since she sent that message out to the universe and Hayley most likely forgot about her experiment with love.

However, she got a reminder last week, when she received an actual Text Message, responding to her plea for love. Robbins was amazed to read a message from someone called Adam, saying he wanted to be a “superhero” and asking her to guess his name. “Adam" went on to say he had found the softball on the beach. Hayley responded by asking if he was joking, to which he replied, no.

Her heart no doubt all aflutter, Hayley responded to the message, believing her plan had finally paid off, but it turns out there was a plot twist in the romantic movie of her life, as “Adam” wasn’t who he seemed to be.

In later messages, “Adam” confessed to being a 16-year-old girl by the name of Ashley. What made the plot twist even stranger is she later went on to admit her name wasn’t Ashley, either, but was actually Kelci.

It is unknown why Kelci used such a cloak and dagger technique to contact Hayley, but the story did end up having a happy ending. While Hayley was unable to find the man of her dreams with her unusual technique, she did end up making a new friend.

When Robbins posted about the story on her Twitter account, the message went viral, with over 12,000 likes and 2,100 shares at the time of writing. Hopefully, Hayley will go on to meet the perfect man in a more conventional way and get to live happily ever after.