The Lost Art of Letter Writing...

I ended up in a conversation on my son's page on Facebook yesterday--this is how it started, with my son's initial post:

"Why do people get all mad when people don't reply to a text? When people don't hear back from others when writing letters, they don't act the same way because they understand that it's a piece of paper traveling a distance and people are busy with life and whatnot. If i don't text you back it's because it's text. It's at my control to reply as I please. No alterior motives, no ignoring.. Cell phones have telephone functionality for a reason."

This prompted my reply:

"The art of letter writing is lost...I'm thinking of starting it up again."

I figured I'd catch some flack from my son about posting in one of his conversations and his friends would just virtually roll their eyes at me and move on. But there were some intriguing comments that were posted afterwards amongst other observations and commentary...

Collin: Mom, it never should have gotten lost.

Nancy (my sister): Jane, in our local school system, they have dropped cursive writing altogether. I understand that the world uses keyboards, etc. now, but this just seems unbelievable to me.

MacyShay: I can't remember how to write in cursive but I did take a coligraphy class (I think that's how its spelled) and it was so much fun but killed my hand! But I wish I knew cursive=(

Hearing these comments actually made me kind of sad. My son actually admitted to me that he didn't really remember cursive either. I had no idea! I guess I hadn't even thought of this consequence of an almost all computer generation. I thought back to when my son was in high school a couple of years ago and realized that most of the essays, reports and whatnot that he turned in to his teachers were always typed up on the computer and printed out.

So I have now made it my mission to start writing more letters. Not emailing...not typing on my computer & printing out...but actually putting pen to paper & thoughtfully writing out what I want to say. No "lol", "omg" or "wtf". It's time take back this lost art. 

So friends & family, watch out! You may have a hand-written correspondence coming to a mailbox near you.

Sincerely yours,
Jane