All of this changed though when our boys went to go fight overseas, and post offices were soon working hours that they didn't experience outside of the holidays.
One Etiquette book from the 1940's enthusiastically encourages:
Whereas before it was looked down upon to write your boy more than once a week, times have changed. Write your boy as often as you can! In fact! Write to every boy you know that's over there fighting for the cause! Write everyday! Those boys need the pick-me-up that comes from getting mail from a gal back home. You don't want any boy's name to not be called when that mail bag comes out.Well admittedly, I am a product of my age and even e-mails seem to be too time consuming when it comes to communication. A grammar-less, 160 characters-or-less text message can convey anything needed. Except for perhaps effort.
So it was that I dusted off my ballpoint pen (after I searched for it for quite a bit through my cramped desk drawers), bought some pretty stationary (I saw it as an investment in encouragement to write), and did something I hadn't done since Madame Vega made us take up French-Pen-Pals; I wrote a Letter.
There was an awkward moment when I was frozen by my insecurity about my handwriting, both in eligibility, size, placement, etc. What if they couldn’t even read what I write? I decided to switch from my much more “attractive” looking cursive, to my mildly chicken-scratch-esque print. Since I was writing to my boyfriend, I figured that cursive might be a bit too much for him to handle. Boys these days are to cursive, as most Americans are to Arabic script. I knew that even motivation to decode the strange, unexpected letter was not great enough for him to break out a Rosetta Stone of sorts and figure out what I wrote, so print it was.
Ignoring the fact that my print handwriting made me feel more like an ill-educated man than an elegant woman of the forties, I wrote. I wrote about my week, made up some funny questions for him to respond to (as well as included a preaddressed and stamped envelope), and shared a few thoughts, feelings, and whims that crossed my mind. It was strange, it was certainly awkward, it was….nice.
When his return letter came in the mail I was ecstatic. There was something so much more personal and touching about a letter than an e-mail, text message, or Facebook wall post could never convey. I soon became a letter-junkie, spending my tiny paychecks on stamps (more costly than it sounds) and stationary. Letters were flying out left and right. When I got bored, I would write. When I didn’t want to wait till the morning to send my letter, I’d jog off campus at 11:38pm down Main St. and over to the post office to mail my precious cargo. Admittedly, my boy made a horrible pen-pal since the first was also the last letter, but it didn’t deter my pen as I scribble down funny things I observed in the day, or drew little cartoons about inside jokes we shared.
The last letter I sent was a joke about the bear that perused the summer camp we both worked at. The Letter was actually an “application” that Yogi was sending in so that he could be on staff next year.
Letters are a lost art in the 21st century, and it’s one that I never knew I missed it till I tried to revive it, if only in my own life. Every other form of long-distance communication just seems so horribly lazy and half-hearted in comparison. Pictures are supposed to speak a thousand words, but in all the Facebook albums posted daily by my friends I don’t hear them. Texts then I guess could be said to speak words of 160 characters of less, but I certainly don’t truly see them. Letters though, their words are magnified by the time, effort, and forty-two cents spent to convey their messages. They’ve been worked on, passed on, survived a vast and expedient journey, all to be delivered into your hands a physical symbol that, You, the writer, wish to say something to them. So next time someone sends you something in the mail, don’t just blow it off. Pick up the pen, and tell them you care too.
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