Awesome Day Fifteen: Snail Mail

First:

Ok, now on to Awesome Day Fifteen.  Two words:  Snail Mail.

I get really excited when I get something in the mail that isn't an advertisement, a bill, or Netflix.  It rarely happens, but on the off chance that I get some kind of handwritten letter or a card, it makes my day.  It reminds me of summer camp, when going away for two weeks sounded like forever, and getting mail from friends and family assured me that home still existed after ten days of bunk beds and cafeteria meals and group showers.

Snail mail, to me, is reassuring.  The world is good, everything is going to be ok, someone is thinking of you.

I even had a pen-pal growing up (remember those?), which makes me wonder: Do kids these days still have pen-pals?  Or are they e-mail pals?  Or do we just call those Facebook friends now?  Damn, I feel old.

Anyway, my point is that snail mail is Awesome.  It's nostalgic.  It's meaningful.  It's tangible, easy to save; you don't delete it, you can't lose it in your inbox.  It takes just a bit more thought and preparation than its electronic relative--buying stamps, putting it in the mailbox, physically writing the message as opposed to typing.  It shows a level of caring that no email could ever replicate.

Snail mail is just plain cooler, too.  It's unique.  It's got postmarks and stamps and the wear and tear of traveling a great distance to get to its recipient.  We can all pretend that e-cards are in someway Awesome--but they're not, and they never will be.  Anything that doesn't actually have a flap of paper to open with a message underneath should not be called a card.

But even with all that appreciation, I can tell you that it's been a while since I sent any snail mail.  I occasionally will send postcards if I'm traveling--but even then, it's rare.  I do have a stack of unsent postcards in my apartment, a collection of all the places I have been in the last few years that never made it to the people with whom I wanted to share it all.  Seriously, snail mail is just not something we factor into our schedules anymore.

(It's also seriously in debt.  I'm worried that snail mail will cease to exist someday soon, that I will talk to my children about snail mail the same way I've been told about carrier pigeons.  And they will look at envelopes and stamps in awe, wondering how it all worked.  You guys, it might happen.)

On Awesome Day Fifteen, however, I decided to take snail mail to a whole new (handmade) level.  I was going to make my own cards--and then, when I realized that I didn't have any envelopes, I committed to making my own envelopes as well.  My day was full of glue sticks and tiny scissors and construction paper.  It was pretty Awesome.

I wrote to relatives and friends, people I either hadn't talked to in a while, or maybe just missed.  It took a while--a long while--but it was fun, and I like the idea of sending messages in the mail that will take days to get to their destination, as opposed to milliseconds.  I like the idea that the letters, when they are received, will be from Awesome Day Fifteen Kat, and not from Current Day Kat, like a little mini-time capsule.  I like the idea that someone I love will stop for a second and know they are missed.  The world is good, everything is going to be ok, someone is thinking of you.

Snail mail is just seriously Awesome.