Do you ever have a theme pop up in your life, like the universe hitting you over the head with an idea until you finally get it? I think I might be in one of those moments.
It started a few weeks ago in a small group chat, when one of my friends mentioned she was getting a pen pal. I thought, "Isn't that quaint?" And that was the end of it. This particular friend is a really good friend — we've known each other since we were 11. In over 40 years, she has easily written five letters to my one. She buys postcards and mails them. I am sure I have at least 40 letters hidden in boxes that I wrote and never sent. One of my great shames in life is the trail of thank-you cards I've written, from high school graduation to baby showers, that never made it to a mailbox. I was filled with glee when email came along, because it gave me a crutch for my inability to find an address, buy a stamp, and actually mail something.
So: pen pals, wonderful activity for her, not so much for me. Especially now, when there are entire websites built to match you to your perfect connection. The one Michelle found is called geekgirlpenpals.com. They've been around since 2013 and have paired over 40,000 pals. You list your top five geeky loves and they find someone else out there with similar geeky loves. It is pretty wonderful, as evidenced by their manifesto.
There's a short wait while you're matched — a month, I think — so in the meantime, Michelle used me as a stand-in. Wonderful for me, terrible for her. First she had to ask if I'd checked my mail. I hadn't. I am not a mail sender or a mail checker. When someone in my house finally checked, there were THREE letters waiting for me. Getting an actual letter that isn't a bill or land spam is amazing — better than a package, even. Packages are no effort; I can let Amazon do the heavy lifting all day long. A letter is different. It takes time, thought, initiative. Suddenly I was in a position to complete a circle or leave it hanging. My mom left me stamps, for God's sake. If that isn't a hint, I don't know what is.
Finding a pen was the real challenge. Most of my pens are the result of accidental theft — I borrow one at the bank and it ends up in my purse, where it dies a slow death, because it's already been used by 150 people before it got to me. No one knows why I keep using pens with barely any ink left, but I do, and as a result I own roughly 20 pens in this exact state of sputter. Fortunately I found a turquoise gel pen belonging to one of the girls, with just enough ink for a full page — which turned out to be about all the legible cursive I had in me. My handwriting, once something I'd worked hard to get to modern-day showy, has fallen into disrepair. No spell check, either. Right out of the gate I wrote heard instead of herd. Hmmm, I decided to allow myself the google crutch for the sanity of my reader. Spell check has been a genuine game-changer in my life; I remember hand-written tests where you got docked for misspelled words, dictionary allowed, except my vowels were never anywhere near the section I actually needed. Google is a master at deciphering my near un-decipherable guesses.
Letter written, send letter. Simple enough. But the road from letter to mailbox turned out to be a long one. I decided Lauren and I needed to include illustrated quotes. Hers was so sweet I didn't want to fold it, which meant a different envelope, unknown postage, a trip to the post office I fully intended to make yesterday and then didn't.
Who knows when I would have actually gotten the letter off. The mission was at risk of becoming letter 41 stuffed in a back drawer somewhere. While browsing Substack, someone in the Netherlands had replied to two of my posts — not a thumbs-up, an actual reply, about saving a bird and about hormones, their experience echoing mine from thousands of miles away. It was, in its own way, a pen pal. A completely unexpected delight. I'd been away from Substack for a few months while my mom was visiting, and I never expected to come back to something so nice waiting for me.
I put the letter and the illustrated quotes in the car, went and had coffee with a friend, and mailed the letter right after. I think we're living in a time where taking the extra effort to make someone else feel seen isn’t just nice. It’s necessary.
I of course, love this, but my favorite part is you heard from someone in the Netherlands. How cool is that!!