Texting…the old fashioned way

25

Remember when you really had to work hard to send a cranky reply to someone? You either had to pick up a pen and paper, or bang away on a typewriter.

Either way you probably ended up with hand cramps.

You had to be committed.

And by the time it was finished you probably weren’t even mad anymore, but writing the message was probably therapeutic anyway 🙂

Nowadays it’s too easy to send something quickly and crabbily.

We read, we misinterpret, we text something short and reactive, and we hit send.

And when we hit send we either feel vindicated somehow….or we instantly think “Oh shit, what have I done!”

Then we stare at the screen and wait for something to come back to us.

When we wrote letters or typed, it took time. We thought more about the words we were putting to actual physical paper. If we made a typo, we either tore up the sheet of paper, used a correction tape or liquid paper, or lived with the errors.

Then we had to put it in an envelope, seal it, and apply a stamp.

Then we had to walk to a mailbox and drop it in and, depending on what time of day that happened, it might not get picked up until the next day, or after the weekend.

It went into a bag, then into a truck, ended up at a mail sort where someone sifted through and directed it into the right pile so it could make its way…wherever. And it might take a week or more to arrive “wherever.”

By the time you got a response, you’d probably forgotten what you’d felt so strongly about.

Those were not bad times.

That’s also why I have a folder in my email called “things I never sent”.

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