A few weeks back, there was a post at the Plurkette Hencircle to sign up to get a penpal. As in, a real pen penpal. As in, pen and paper. No e-mails. Just good, old fashioned, personal letters. I thought it was a fantastic idea.
I signed up and received my penpal assignment earlier this week. I was delighted to find out that my penpal is from the U.K.! I’ve already written a letter and it’s sitting here on my desk at work till I have a chance to run down to the post office and mail it. I’m really looking forward to having a penpal to correspond with.
When I was in grade school, I had a penpal named Katie who lived in England. She was the granddauther of a family friend. She and I used to write to eachother all the time. I loved reading her letters and once we even exchanged tapes we recorded with a mix of talking and our favorite songs. Over time though, we grew up and lost touch. And our friend Betty, who was her grandmother and our dear friend, has since passed away. So I’ve really lost touch with her. I’d love to track her down again someday though, and see if she remembers her childhood penpal in America, as much as I remember her.
When I got this penpal, I went to the Hallmark card store in search of some pretty stationary. They had two options: plain white or plain cream. Wow, how times have changed! I remember when I was a little girl and wrote to Katie, I had a 101 Dalmatians stationary set and a Lisa Frank-designed unicorn stationary set. I probably had others too, but those stand out in my memory. I remember the stores always had all sorts of pretty sets of writing stationary — with sayings on the bottom and pretty pictures and borders. Now it’s a real challenge to find stuff like that. Several people suggested to me to try dollar stores, so I’m going to check there. But I guess it’s a commentary on our lives today: no one hand-writes letters anymore. At best, we sometimes type a letter, print it, and mail it. But more often, we just type an e-mail and shoot it off instantaneously across the world. And while that ability to communicate in milliseconds is absolutely wonderful, I think there’s still something to be said for old-fashioned hand-written cards and letters. I know it means a lot to me when I get a card in the mail where someone took the time to write a paragraph or two, rather than just doing a mail-merge and stamping out form letters.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned that way, though…
