Snail Mail

        An incredibly average day, nothing significant has occurred. School was a cornucopia of normalcy and monotony. I drive up my same road. Passing the same six houses I pass every single day on my way to and from my house. The same old perfectly trimmed front yards. It's a Tuesday, so of course, everyone's garbage and recycling cans are out to be collected. The sun induces a sweltering heat that makes me dread the forty seconds it will take me to leave the comfort of my air conditioned car, retrieve the mail from our green mailbox. I enter my same garage and unlock the same old lock. I yell "Hello!" to anyone in the house who may be around to hear me, met with a resounding silence. I throw my bag on the desk, shed my sunglasses, and begin to sift through the mail. The same bills, junk mail pamphlets from no-name colleges, coupons for stores I've never heard of or never intend to visit. Then all of a sudden, there's my name. Displayed in the hand of not a computer, but an actual hand. Perhaps the hand of a friend.  
     Snail mail. How out of fashion this has become in our age of technology. A world where e-mail, texting, skyping, it's all just taken over our lives. A world where "LOL" can supplement as a response. A world where "TTYL" has replaced a proper farewell. A world where a pixelation on a screen can make up for the emotion that could be displayed through a hand written note. A hand written letter, crafted with an old-fashioned pen and paper. A hand written letter that takes time, effort, and emotion to create.
     When I receive an e-mail that I feel has some sort of importance that I want to save, to be able to bring out in a moment of sadness, look back on and feel the happiness encased by the note, I will drag and drop it to my "saved mail" folder on my computer. When I receive a letter or a card that I want to save for a later date, I will take the time to fasten it into my scrap book. A scrap book that one day, when my children are going through some of my old things from high school, they will stumble upon. They can look back at what my friends and I would talk about when we were there age.
     One Christmas Eve at my Grandma's house, my sisters and I were snooping around our Mom's old bedroom. The closet is something of a treasure trove. Old sketch books. Board games. Records. Then, a faded old scrapbook. Jackpot. Inside, we unlock the secrets of our Mother's teenage years. She took the time to save notes (handwritten, of course), that she passed between her and her best friend in the midst of a boring high school lecture. Post cards sent from my Dad while they were dating. In reading these notes and postcards, I could look back on my parents relationship. How my Dad tried to impress my Mom with the fact that he was a budding young pilot. That one of their first dates was on a riverboat. And I didn't have to read these things off of a computer screen, in a "saved mail" dropbox.
     To be able to feel the letter. To see the handwriting. It shows so much more than just the words, but what the writer was feeling when they wrote the words. Suddenly the words have taken on a new meaning. I can now save the words in a real box forever. My children will look back on how much of a loser I was when I was a teenager and we'll laugh at my expense. I have no idea where technology will be in the future. But I will promise this. I will buy my children a stationary kit of their own, put a pen in their hands, and hope they'll feel the same. Write the old fashioned way. Feel the words on the page, not through a screen. Use their words, not their acronyms. Make a proper greeting, and a thoughtful farewell. Snail mail is not dead. And I hope it never will be.