What's with communication these days?
Used to, people took the time to write letters. They picked out the right stationary, sharpened a few pencils, sat back and thought about what they were going to say, wrote it down carefully, folded it, put it in an envelope, sometimes maybe put a little perfume or underarm sweat on it, licked the flap and then the stamp, walked down to the box and sent it off...then the receive-ee would get it in the mail, excitedly rip it open right there or maybe put it in a pocket and walk around with it all day waiting with anticipation for just the right quiet moment to open and read it. Might read it fast the first time and then once again slowly, taking the time to analyze every word and phrase. Studied the quality of the handwriting, sometimes you could get a sense of the writer's mood from the way the letters were formed. Then put it back in the envelope and save it to read again later.
Then we had e-mail.
People wrote and wrote each other. It's easy to type and there's not much prep time involved so anything went. People wrote the first things that came to mind and then whatever they thought of next. Writing became more impersonal, the reader didn't have a physical connection with the writer any more, no pretty paper or a postmarked from home envelope. No perfume or whiffs of grandma's musty old house to smell. Reader and writer connected only by bits of digital data, ones and zeros in endless combinations, decoded by some unfathomable process of computerized wizardry.
Then email died. Text messaging mugged it an alley, stole what little soul it had and stuck a knife in it. Left it lying in a drab hospital room on life support, to be used only for spam ads for Viagra and porn invites, mindless chain letters and impersonal forwards making outlandish claims and assertions that would cause a National Enquirer editor to turn green with envy, most of which can be proven false with a little effort and Snopes. Text messaging, with it's LOL's and ROTFLMAO's and BTW's and NOYDB's and purposely misspelled words to save time.
But there are some of us who have almost stood up from our soft comfortable office chairs in front of our extra large flat screen monitors and we have said "No more!" We refuse to let the art of the written word die a silent and ignoble death! And while we are generally too lazy to actually write a letter with pen and paper and too cheap to pop for a 50 cent stamp we still have the keyboard! As long as there are people in our address books we will reply to every three word e-mail with long heartfelt dissertations on anything and everything whether we are qualified to speak on the subject or not! We are the self appointed saviors of words, ensuring that humans as a species do not lose the ability to write and read and understand! Join us! Lift up your voice! Write! Don't hide your candle under a bush, let your thoughts and feelings and opinions be heard all across this great land, from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam! God bless America!
(There should be some inspirational music playing here but the closest I had was Walk This Way by Aerosmith. Insert your own.)
