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Stop! Oh, yes, wait a minute, Mister Postman!

Now, I hear the USPS might shut down Saturday service … I’m okay with that — as long as they continue five days a week. usps

But what I lament is the idea that people just don’t write old-fashioned letters anymore. We’re losing something — an archive of loves, loves lost, travels, penmanship, the ability to coherently write down our thoughts without the benefit of the backspace button or cut and paste rearranging of our thoughts.

How can you express real longing in an email?

I’ve written letters where tears plopped down from my eyes and blotched the ink on the page below, rendering a word or two or maybe several scattered over two or three lines — unreadable. But yet, so readable, right? Pretty hard to misread the emotion behind a tear-stained letter.

And, I’ve been known to literally seal (some of) my letters with a bright red lipsticked kiss, even spritz them with Chanel No. 5.

I doodle cat drawings and smiley faces and send my letters addressed to people I love with big bold color addresses on the front and call men things like “Joe–Master of the Universe-Smith” and “Simon-chef extraordinaire Jarault” — stuff like that. Women, obviously, get less flirtation in my envelope-addressing, but I write them all the same. Just don’t girlify their envelopes up like I do the guys’.

But I write to women friends as much as I do to men. And I still write to three college professors — one of whom maddens me (and I mean that affectionately!) by only corresponding via email and not giving me his home mailing address so I can stalk him in an appropriately literary fashion. I can’t write him at the university any longer because he’s long since retired. He’s the one who taught me about Shakespeare and yet I can’t write to him because he’s an email kinda guy now.

Ah, the vagaries of corresponding.

Didn’t Kevin Costner do a movie about delivering the mail in some future world — The Postman or something like that? Guess I’ll have to watch that.

In the meantime, I’ll continue my love affair with letters … and with the people who deliver them … and oh, yeah, particularly with the people who write me back!

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Posted on March 3rd, 2010Comments RSS Feed
3 Responses to Stop! Oh, yes, wait a minute, Mister Postman!
  1. We are the last 2 people on earth who love handwritten letters!!!
    And most people don’t even think I exist!
    Sorry MC,
    this year I’m accepting texts
    With love,
    Stay good!,
    S.C.

  2. Susan M. Kinsella
    March 11, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    Actually, there are three of us, as Mary Catherine knows! I spent an afternoon two weeks ago sitting in bed, drinking tea and writing letters to people I hadn’t heard from in a very long while. I received email responses, but that’s okay. Everyone was so happy to received something written on good stationery.

  3. And yes — I was one of those lucky recipients earlier this year!

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