Pen Pals Wanted

How long has it been since you received a letter? Not a card, but an honest-to-God, handwritten (hell, typed even), hand addressed letter delivered by the US Postal Service? I will put my over-under at ten-twelve years. I was in college the last time I exchanged letters with anyone. How sad! The last time I sent an email or a Facebook message? 15 minutes. The last time I sent a card? last week. But a letter, the most civilized and lovely way to let someone know something? Over a decade. This has got to change, I am going to re-learn how to hold a pen, practice my D'nealian handwriting (why wasn't cursive good enough? I never could wrap my 2nd-grade brain around it) and spray a few sheets of lined paper with my perfume. I'm making a personal pact to swap out my next quick-fire email to a long-distance friend for a letter.

This obsession with letters not me shaking my rolling pin at kids these days and the coldness of technology-fueled correspondence. I have just been jolted from my word-per-minute writing by two things. First, I was moving a few boxes and dug into my keepsake box. Keepsake box sounds so cheesy, it's just a box (no Precious Moments on the cover) where I have stashed things from people that make me feel good about myself. It's full of birthday cards, good luck and bon voyage cards, notes from my Mom and Grandma, a lunchbox reminder from my Dad in the 1st grade that reads "Hi it's Dad. Yes, in your lunchbox. Now eat all your lunch or you'll shrivel up and forget how to read." And in that box I found a letter from one of my great high school friends sent to me while we were both freshmen in college. Reading that letter, full of nerves and excitement and funny details about cute boys, tough classes and small dorm rooms, I remembered how much fun it was to go to my mailbox and have a letter waiting for me with a sticker on the back and a Madison, WI postmark. She and I are still in touch, but now we email or write long notes on Facebook. While I'm grateful that these things allow us to talk still after all these years, I can't tell you how excited I would be to get a letter tomorrow postmarked from Oakland, CA. Sticker or not.

Second, my letter mania has deepened by reading the very fun book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It came in my Christmas box of books (if you don't get a Christmas box of books - I highly suggest you convince someone to begin giving you one this year) from my Dad. I won't give any plot away, so that you too may enjoy it, but it's set just after WWII in Great Britain and the whole book, characters, relationships, action is revealed through letters. And it's delightful. Really, I love it. And each page I turn, it's like heading to the mailbox. There is something about the letters that makes the wit, wittier; the angst, angstier and the love, lovelier. It all makes me want to be witty, angsty and lovely. What it reminds me is that people can communicate without falling back on short quips and "'sup"s. This isn't meant to be a book review (I have one of those forthcoming) but if you're in the market, I will give it my stamp.

So now I've got the determination and motivation. I will turn this computer off and pull out my notebook. Force myself to consider what I want to say to important people in my life that is worth putting in ink with no delete key safety net. I will practice my jumpshot with the waste basket in the corner until I get it right. I know I won't abandon email and the like (too convenient, too wonderful) and I am a bona fide Twitter, instant-gratification devotee. But I'm intent on finding a pen pal or two and setting out to slow down.