I love getting mail. I even love the waiting for the mail. The anticipation when you have ordered something or you know something is on its way to you. I am anxiously awaiting an item I ordered late last week. I can hardly wait.
I have a definite appreciation for the instant gratification of email but there is nothing like getting a hand written letter. Or taking the time to hand write one yourself. Back in my early 20’s my best friend and I would write to each other, sometimes several times a week. The letters were the written version of a chatty phone call – full of details of how we were spending our day, the men in our lives, the diets we were constantly on. Quite often they were spotted with suntan oil, or written on mismatched scraps of paper.
I have saved every one of those letters and so has she. There are hundreds of them. It’s fun to go back and read one or two of them and remember how we spent our idle youth. I mean who has the time, now a days, to spend hours each week, lazing about in the sun, writing letters.
Even when I was very young I had a thing for the mail. Or the mailman, actually. My next-door neighbor Naomi, a sophisticated seven to my callow six, and I would skip along the sidewalk following our neighborhood mailman along his route. We would chat with him and beg for a ride in his mail truck (he never said yes – said it was against the U. S. Postal Service rules).
Naomi got the notion that in order to really get his attention we needed to streak him. This was even before the streaking craze in the 70’s. Our plan was to disrobe in the bushes that separated our houses and when he got to my house we were going to bolt out of the bushes and run across the property to the other side.
Well when the day came Naomi chickened out and would only take off her top. I’m thinking in for a penny, in for a pound and took off all my clothes. The mailman drove up to my house and when he got out of his truck I ran, stark naked across the driveway and ran smack into my mother who had chosen that particular day to go out and greet the mailman.
I am not sure who was more shocked, the mailman (who we had for another 12 years and whom I could never quite look in the eye again) or my mother. I don’t even remember if I got in trouble or not – so flabbergasting was the act.
I know Naomi didn’t get in trouble – she never left the safety of the bushes and quickly put her shirt back on when she saw how quickly things were unraveling in my front yard.
(photos courtesy of istockphoto)
There’s nothing like getting a card or note in the mail!
Your story reminds me of the time I invited a great guy over for dinner (we had known each other for awhile, but gone out only once). My 3 1/2 year-old daughter was really excited to have company and went into her room and came out running around the house with nothing on but a huge smile!
I was flabbergasted! Everything turned out all right–we’ve been married over 30 years.
Cute story!
My friend, from school days, and her husband, winter in South Padre Texas, every year. She is without the computer most of the time. We write letters. It’s so much fun to receive her letters and to write letters to her. Letter writing is almost a lost art! My friend is back in Missouri, now. We’ll resume our letter writing in December.
Pat
Back Porch Musings
I haven’t read anything so funny in a long time. Thank you for sharing your story.
Debbie
I literally laughed out loud at the image of six-year-old you streaking the mailman! What a great story!
I miss the days of letters. My husband-to-be and I wrote volumes to each other while we were attending two colleges 150 miles away from each other (in the pre-e-mail days). My mother-in-law is a letter writer also, and I have many of her letters stashed away…but it is true that as life gets busier and the computer and the cell phone become more convenient, the pleasure of finding a letter in the mailbox among all the bills and junk mail is becoming more fleeting.
This makes me want to take the time to write more letters to my small nieces and nephews, so that the pleasure might just linger into another generation!
Like yourself I’m always intrigued to what the postman delivers. Unfortunately these days hand written letters are a thing of the past for me.
Oh what a great story, on yourself! Thank you for sharing. 🙂
Hi, I’m Mari-Nanci from smilnsigh I’m trying to remember how I happened to come to your blog. {I love to surf through pretty blogs!} Oh yes, I saw the name of yours, and it caught my eye, because there will be a ‘Blue Moon,’ this May. And I’m so glad I did happen to pop in here.
You have a lovely blog. You love old Victoria’s and their books. {so you must be thrilled that Victoria is to be re-issued} And you love letters. How perfect is all that? :-))
Mari-Nanci
http://smilnsigh.blogspot.com/
Oh, that’s so funny. I can only imagine he must have been cute or something?