Jan 8, 2008
These Kids Today and their Mail
A new year is a fresh promise, a time of new hope, a time to resolve to do things differently, a new beginning, the first day of the rest of our lives… yesterday my local gym was full of people I don’t usually see there, clogging up machines, standing and chatting about their holidays in front of the equipment. Today, with temperatures dropping below 10 degrees, fewer people made the trip. So much for those resolutions. It was a pleasure to get back to normal again.
One of the local Connecticut newspapers has a column called Fresh Talk, which gives the perspective of young people on topics that interest them; there was an essay in there recently that I want to share with you. It was written by Dafna Laskin, a young woman who attends college at Uconn (home of the Uconn Huskies).
In Digital Age, Real Mail Delivers
FRESH TALK DAFNA LASKIN
On a recent cold and rainy evening, I found myself trudging to my campus postbox to check for any mail, which by then would have been lying untouched for nearly two months. I had no doubt that the box would be empty — college students don't get much mail besides credit card offers, parking ticket notices and university notifications about yearbook pictures and career office meetings.
So it was to my supreme shock and delight to find an envelope with my name on it — not typed, but handwritten — awaiting me in that mailbox.
One sharp corner of that little blue envelope was jutting out from underneath a month-old flier for a graduate studies meeting. I quickly snatched it up, checking the return address to see who had been so thoughtful, so diligent a friend and so organized that he or she kept stationary in order to stay in touch, as distant as we all may seem these days.
This uplifting 4-by-6 card, as it turned out, was from a schoolmate of a friend, who I know by name but have never met. She was willing to spend five minutes of her time and 41 cents for a stamp just to brighten a stranger's day.
This particular young woman sends my good friend cards for every occasion, sometimes when there is none at all, sometimes when the address is halfway around the world. I have often commented to my friend on how impressive her unfailing correspondence has been. Apparently, when she heard how much I admired her commitment to the postal service, she decided to send me my own bit of mail.
For a lot of us college students, most conversations are online, instantly messaged between two people, both of whom are usually talking to eight other people at the same time, listening to music, writing a paper and eating. And it's usually just a conversation of convenience, when the other person happens to be online and you're looking for an excuse to waste some time. It's not that you are thinking of that person and want them to know — their Internet screen name just happens to be on your radar at that exact moment.
The excitement was so much that I could barely tear open the envelope. I read the note slowly, savoring every neatly written letter. It said nothing earth-shattering, of course, but rather a few perfectly pleasant sentences one might expect from a stranger unsure of what to say. In short, the words themselves were pretty anticlimactic.
And yet, I was unable to wipe the grin from my face for several minutes. I ran back to my room and searched for the note cards I bought at the beginning of the semester.
I vowed to send at least one to each of my friends at their schools, if only to allow them one ounce of the happiness I felt knowing that good old-fashioned letter writing is indeed alive and well, and that someone had thought of me without being prompted to by a box on a screen or a message on a phone.
I sat down at my desk. In less than three minutes, I had written my original correspondent a note, thanking her for the card and wishing her the best. I scrounged around for some loose change to buy a stamp, dropped the envelope off to be mailed on my way to class, and thought about how happy she will be to open her own mailbox and find my note waiting for her.
There's still a place for snail mail in this digital age after all.
Dafna Laskin , 21, of Hamden is a senior at the University of Connecticut, majoring in journalism and history. The Courant invites writers younger than 30 to write essays of 600 words or less containing strong views. Please e-mail your submission to freshtalk@courant.com, with your full name, hometown, daytime phone number, age and occupation (or your school's name and your level in school). To see more Fresh Talk on the Internet, go to www.courant.com/freshtalk.
Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
Except for the derogatory term “snail” mail, there’s a lot to like here (for the record, I prefer the term “LandSpam”). It shows that conventional wisdom is wrong—kids do like mail.
Everyone likes mail. Maybe not as much of it as we sometimes get and maybe not all that redundant mail, the catalogs and the mortgage offers. But at this time of year, as I get ready to throw out the forty or fifty Christmas cards that have been hanging on the living room window nearest the tree, mail is a good thing. There are catalogs to help us pick out gifts, direct mail pieces to direct us to sales at local merchants and online offers, greeting cards with pictures of little kids on them, thank you notes to send out…bonus checks.
And I realized that college hasn’t changed that much since I went there—kids still have to go get the mail. And isn’t it nice to get letters from people along with the other junk? The truth is that kids like getting mail. They just hate sending it. They hate having to buy the stamps, lick the stamps, and affix the stamps. They hate having to fold the paper and insert it into the envelope. They probably hate having to remember to post the letter. They’re just like us.
What they are used to is instant messaging and texting and email. So why don’t we make mail production for kids easier by using that kind of technology to take care of the stamps and inserting and posting? Why don’t we make it easier for all of us?
This is my New Year’s Resolution: to create a revolution in mail by making mail cool again.
I teach college. I know the kids. I know what they like: they like being creative, they like influencing each other, and they like to do most anything that they can ONLINE. If we give them a platform upon which to ply their creativity, create text and maybe upload photos and drawings, and give us the name and address to send it to and hit ENTER on their keyboard, we will take care of the rest. Once they get started it will take on a life of its own.
Who’s with me? It’s a New Year and a whole new future for mail.