Long ago and far away, when I was a young girl, I loved to write letters. This was a time when there were no computers, no cell phones, and… gasp… long distance telephone calls were very, very expensive. I wrote letters to friends in the city I had moved away from. I wrote letters to my grandparents. I wrote notes to classmates…. (antique style texting under the table) in class! I also had three pen pals.
I don’t remember how I acquired these pen pals. Debbi lived in Massachusetts and owned a horse. I had a horse too, so we had lots to talk/write about. We even exchanged black and white photos taken with our matching, Kodak Instamatic cameras.
I also had two pen pals who lived in Japan. I think I may have made these two friends through Girl Scouts while earning one of the badges that got sewn on my sash. Both of their names started with T, but I don’t remember anything else about them, or what we wrote about to each other. All three of those relationships slowly fizzled out. When I went away to college, I wrote to my parents, my friends, my grandparents. Eventually long distance got cheaper and I did more calling than writing.
Then along came blogging. Suddenly I found myself with all kinds of new, far away friends. At first, I thought it was very strange to be writing back and forth with people all over the world whom I had never met. Then I realized, it was just like having lots of pen pals!
Kerry Lee 