Jonnie said something yesterday that stopped me in my tracks
I don’t think I have ever had a letter through the post
Other than bank statements or his contact lenses or junk mail, it struck me that he was right. Teenagers probably haven’t even had a letter through the post. Never had that excitement of a pretty envelope with their name on, the address hand written. A letter inside telling them news, secrets, sadness even.
I was a big letter writer when I was younger. Well we had no choice. There was no email, whatsapp, Snapchat, twitter, Facebook, blogging. The only way to keep in touch with a friend who moved away, or that you met on holiday, was via post. It is sadly dying out now and that makes me sad.
There is something very special about getting “proper post”, isn’t there?
I got the letter above last week. I will keep the sender anonymous as they didn’t do this for recognition. They did it, well because they are lovely and it is just the sort of thing that they do. Despite being one of the busiest people I know, they took time out of their day to sit down with a blank piece of paper and write this poem, illustrate it, and post it.
This is somebody who I am in touch with online, not on a daily basis, but often enough that I know what is going on with them, and vice versa, and the need to write a letter and post anything is, well not there really. So to get something through the post from them was totally unexpected.
And made me instantly burst into tears.
I met this person online, it was a while before we met in real life. Had we not met online we would never have met as we don’t live near each other and have no mutual friends offline. Our mutual friends are online. It further cemented why I love social media. That it can bring these people not just to the end of a keyboard but into my post box. And into my life
In the middle of my working day onto my kitchen table with a cuppa as I opened the envelope.
It really does make me sad that teenagers will never experience this joy. The joy of sitting and doing something like that, the anticipation of “has it arrived yet?” The joy of receiving something like this letter.
You really dont’ get that from a text, do you?
I do like receiving texts and emails but I agree with you, it really is not the same as receiving actual mail in the post – hand-written mail at that! I think it shows how much someone really cares, mainly because people don’t have the time to do it these days. Making the time is so important though. Thank you for that reminder 🙂
Thanks for the poignant reminder, there’s nothing more lovely than receiving a letter through the post. I’ve written to my daughters since they left for uni and they love receiving letters from home filled with all the latest news. I continue to write to Sophia as she’s working is the US during the summer and keeping in touch with her is so difficult as she has no phone signal.
As you say, we had no choice when we were younger, as Facebook etc didn’t exist.