Day 351 – Remember When?

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351/365 (December 17, 2010) – Remember when typing someone a letter took a bit more effort? It meant making sure the ribbon was inked and ready? When a mistake wasn’t easily remedied? You had to stuff that little piece of white, coated paper in between the ribbon and your paper and backspace once, hit the wrong key, backspace again, pull the correction film out, hit the right key, then continue on?

The nice thing about those days was that a lot of thought went into letters. Because they were hand written or typed they took more effort to compose. Then you had to find an envelope, find a stamp, find a mailbox. That all took time. If you were mad, just the act of writing might be enough to blow off steam…. the odds were that you wouldn’t send the letter because you’d had time to think an bit. Maybe that’s why letters were usually nicer years ago.

In today’s world, we write fast and hit send in a knee jerk reaction. We don’t take the time to “think” about what we are going to say because it has become to easy to do it quick and then forget about it. We have lost the pleasantries, the formality of th letter has become obsolete. I, for one, miss it.

Maybe that’s one reason that the world is becoming a less friendly and kind place. We seem to have lost a lot of basic social skills, and the next generation doesn’t realize what’s been lost because the emphasis on those skills was never hammered home. The “Me” generation, the “pampered” generation. Not that that personality hasn’t always existed, it just seems a lot more prevalent today.

Anyway, enough rambling, this is just the old Underwood typewriter that sits in our living room. Didn’t realize how filthy it was until I took a picture of it. A pretty major dust and cat hair collector.