Little Pleasures

I love getting mail!  Who doesn’t?  When I was a teen, I always had pen pals (I’m still in contact with one of them!).  Running home from school to check the mail was the highlight of my day.  In those days, we went home for lunch and if the mailman didn’t show before I had to leave for school again at 12:30, boy was I cheesed!  That meant having to spend another 3 hours at school bursting with anticipation.  

One of my pals use to send anywhere from 2-10 letters a week.  I’m not kidding!  Once I got 5 letters in one day.  And they were always “fun” letters – stickers, pens, pieces of gum and other little treasures were often tucked inside.  She lived in New Jersey, and it cost about half as much for her to send a letter to me as it cost for me to send a letter to her.  Her parents kept her in her postage habit; even at the tender age of 12, I had to purchase my own stamps using my baby-sitting money.  So I couldn’t reciprocate as frequently, but she didn’t seem to mind.

As we get older, postal mail turns from “fun” to “functional”.  Even e-mail has lost its appeal – it’s rare to find a personal message in my inbox anymore.  Instead I have offers for free magazine subscriptions (so long as I sign up for eighteen years of roadside assistance first), instructions on how to claim my lottery winnings from Zimbabwe, or warnings that my deodorant is going to kill me.    Snail mail is now almost exclusively bills and invitations to apply for credit cards (and get more bills!).

Today was one of those days that makes you love the mail again.  When I peeked out the door, the box was stuffed!  All of the contents were addressed to me and all of the contents were fun:  my new business cards from Vista Print, three magazines (Chatelaine, Real Simple and Macleans), plus my bundle of flat-rate shipping boxes from Canada Post.   Yay!  Now I’m off to read some magazines….