Most of us are optimists. I can prove it. Raise your hand if you look forward to going to the mail box? Come on, be honest. Raise your hand
if when you see the mail truck coming down your street, or the letter carrier walking up the block, you get a little excited. We all have a little lilt in our voice when we say, “Hey, here comes the mailman.” This optimism continues, despite the overwhelming evidence. I mean, Monday thru Saturday, 52 weeks a year, for years if not decades now, you can assume all you will get in the mail is crap. Sure we get the occasional magazine subscription. And those are mostly single people. People I know with kids, quickly let their subscriptions lapse. Give or take a birthday card, or a refund check in April, there’s really no good reason to go to the mail box. So why do we still have a spring in our step as we go to check the mail?
Somewhere, deep in our DNA, we remember a time when the mailbox held treats; letters written by far away friends. Maybe you’d get a letter from a college buddy, a camp friend or if you're lucky, someone you have a crush on? I’m no Luddite, I am all for the forward march of technology. I mean if I had to write this on a Smith-Corona, I despised those machines, I might not write at all. This email stuff is cool, but we’ve lost a little something when we stopped writing letters. Don’t you think? Now there’s nothing to touch; nothing to smell, nothing to reread or savor. How many times have you reread an email?”
I really do miss going to the mailbox and seeing one of those special envelopes, mixed in with all the other mail, that was a letter from a friend. Maybe you were like me? I would tease myself, put the letter to the side, put the other mail in its proper pile, read everything else and then finally get to the letter. I had the pleasure of being a camp counselor during my high school and college years. That’s when the letter writing bug bit me. I made a lot of friends at YMCA Silver Lake and camp people liked to keep in touch the 10 months we were not at camp. At a time when long distance calls were still measured in minutes and fathers policed the phone bill, letters were an economical option to stay in touch. As an avid reader, someone who values his friendships and enjoys writing, letters were a no-brainer.
There was nothing like writing to a friend, trying to entertain, updating them on our lives all while trying to speak in our voice in the process. I loved crafting the letter, snickering at my desk picturing one of my buddies getting a kick out of one of my sophomoric stories. I guess that’s not all that different from email. But part of the joy was the anticipation, knowing the letter was in the postal system, meandering its way to Anytown, USA. For a few days picturing my friend’s mailbox at his or her house, knowing or hoping that they will be excited to receive a letter. Assuming their response is similar to my response when their return letter arrives a few weeks later.
Those of us who were letter writers could recognize letters by their post-mark, type of stationary, maybe a peculiar handwriting or of course a return address. To this day I could tell you that Kira’s, (that’s my wife) home address was 2 Dawn Lane in Ridgefield CT. Mike and Chrissy Parker lived at 62 Rodgers Lane in Sparta, NJ. If the post mark was Kilmer Facility? It’s a letter from Moira Flanagan in Phillipsburg. Bill Dunleavy, who enlisted in the army after college? He could be anywhere from Fort Benning, Georgia to Germany.
Winters in Brooklyn could be cold, months long roller hockey seasons, ice cold train platforms, and touch football games on East 4th Street so a letter from a friend was a ray of summer sunshine. And one of the beauties was we could save letters, not like emails. My letters were in a pair of cardboard boxes. Now that was something entertaining, to come across a box of letters months if not years later. I usually uncovered mine each time I moved. To sit on the basement floor and pick out a handful of letters was special. And again, email? To revisit our personal history, to go back in time, to remember what we were doing sophomore year in college…
Fargo Quad’s mailroom was right off the terrace on the second floor. The mail was delivered every day at around 3:30. And it was a social event. If I was in the vicinity, I’d stick around. Most of the "mailroom groupies," looking back, were probably girls awaiting letters from boyfriends and the occasional geek like me. We had those old-fashioned, little door mail boxes. You know the brass rectangles with the little glass window and the dial for your combo? We’d position ourselves near our mailboxes and watch Cheryl’s silhouette as she moved around behind the mailboxes, teasing us with visions of an incoming letter. Back and forth her shadow’d go, tantalizing us…here she comes, this is going to be for me, she’s reaching her hand up….No or Yes! It was always kinda cool if you got a letter, or maybe even two. It felt a little, I hate to admit it, but a little like, proof that you might actually have friends. That someone else thought you were letter-worthy, sadly, felt a little cool. Those who walked away from the mailroom empty handed, their envy was just icing on the cake. I once parlayed a letter from Robin Omark, a camp friend, into a bit of intrigue with one particularly cute freshman. “Oh, Spinner, who is Robin Omark?” But that’s a story for another time.
So I am not asking you to become a Quaker or to move to Amish country but maybe we could all take out a legal pad, or dust off that box of picturesque cards you bought while on vacation and write a letter to a friend. Think about the smile you will create on the other end when this old friend goes to the mailbox and sees a letter, from you! Wouldn’t that be cool? I know I am being a dreamer. And on that note, I am going to check the mail.
