I got a letter in the mail today, something most people don’t hear anymore these days. It’s either a text message (which I tend to be the queen of) or an email, which too are becoming more rare, but letters in the mail… those are almost unheard of these days. I was recently reading a book, and it contained a quite interesting statement. The gal had bought an old farm house that had been left to “family,” but there wasn’t much family to leave it to. The man had no descendants, so he left the house to a distant relative, and eventually, she purchased it.
There were rumors that the house had hidden treasure, so she and the guy she eventually married (yes, it was a romance of sorts) started digging through the attic to see if they could find the “treasure.” One of the treasures happened to be old love letters. She commented then that our children and grandchildren won’t get to see our old love letters due to emails and texts. Wow! That hit the nail right on the head.
Honestly, I have thought about this before, but seeing it written by someone else just really made me have a WOW moment. People don’t just sit down and write letters these days. I’m also reading a book series that takes place back in the early 1800s. There are things about that series, too, that make me think about this whole writing aspect.
Nowadays, if you have a quick message you want to convey to someone, you shoot them a text, pick up the phone and call them, or even email them, but back then, they would “drop notes” to the person who needed to know. If you lived in town, you could probably convey that message fairly quickly, but if you lived out of town, it was probably days before the message was delivered. In fact, in one of the books in the series, the guy made it to a house before the message ever arrived to inform him. He went for her to bring her home, she penned that she was staying with her brother and sister in law to help take care of her sick nephew. They had had a misunderstanding before she left, so he went to clear up the unresolved issue, and he passed the message without even knowing that she would eventually come back.
I also recently read a news article that addressed how the postal service was a private entity that was governed by the government, and that they were going to make some changes that, honestly, I’m not sure I agree with. Now, I’m just one person, so if I were to throw a fit, they’d tell me σώπα (pronounced sopa, which translates to “be quiet” or “shut up”). A few more people get involved, and then you make a difference. But that part is neither here nor there with what I’m actually trying to say.
Have you actually sat down and taken time to read old letters? They are kind of fun. Especially knowing that times were different. Back when my husband and I were first dating, we stumbled across a Note Notebook between my friends and me. We’d buy a notebook, write each other a note, and send it off to the next class with them. It was definitely easier to read in class and write back because you looked like you were just taking notes. There were no pretty folds or anything like that. It was kind of fun. Well, I still have one of them, oddly enough.
Let’s just say we had fun sitting around one rainy afternoon reading the notes of a then 10th grader. It did get a little embarrassing when my friends called me out for liking my husband. I didn’t want to admit it. Then something happened, and a friend said his b—- must not have dropped because his voice was too high. My retort was to say that I cut them off and took them home, bronzed them, and they were hanging on my wall. See, fun things that 10th graders come up with. When we read that, I turned every shade of red imaginable. Of course, he looked at me with his devilish grin and said, Hmmm, I knew something was up. oy!
To this day, 16 years later, he still teases me every once in a while about that. Some things maybe should just stay in the past, but that’s neither here nor there… well, it might be there, in that notebook. There was actually also a letter between him and me where he asked me out on a date. My parents said I couldn’t date until I was 16, and at the time, I was just 15. I didn’t know how to ask if I could go, but it didn’t matter because he came back the next week with a girlfriend. At that point, I waved the white surrender flag and backed off. Oh well, 10 years later we wound up dating anyway, and I finally got that first date.
All of this to really say, maybe we should bring back the art form of writing letters. I mean, we’re bringing back vinyl records and record players and the 80’s fashions are trying to rear their ugly head, which by the way, they definitely should have stayed in the 80s! So why not bring back the art form of letter writing? It is definitely more fun to receive a letter in the mail from a friend than to receive yet another bill to pay. Adulting is no fun!
