By Anna Brooker, England
Ever have one of those bad letter writing days? You know the kind, when nothing goes right? I sometimes have my bad letter days. Days when I really just want to sit down and relax and answer a pal’s letter, but things just keep getting in the way.
I think it has to be an unwritten law of pen palling that whether you have two pals or 20, they will all write on the same day. Meanwhile, you try to answer the letters so they are mailed out at different times thinking that should clear up the problem. Then two or three weeks later you get another flood of letters in one day.
When you have an onslaught of letters to get through, you find a quiet moment, get your pretty stationery and start to really enjoy the experience--- and your pen runs out of ink. Once your flow is interrupted you get a little disgruntled searching for another pen. When you find one, you get comfortable and as you begin to write you realize it’s a different color ink than the pen you started out with. You roll your eyes and just explain it away in your letter because your pal will most assuredly sympathize. As you begin to smile at that thought--- your pen runs out of ink. It’s a viscous cycle, but we persevere.
Of course there are those days when you do find a pen that can keep up with you and you go merrily on your way writing. You feel quite pleased with your letter and how you’ve managed to get so far writing it without incident. Stopping to think that thought was your downfall, though, as you find you have run out of that particular stationery. If you’d known it was the last
sheet of paper you could have ended the letter, but you
squeezed that one last line in at the bottom to finish off the thought you’d started. None of your other stationery matches, which ruins the mood, and you don’t know what else to write now anyway.
If you do make it to the envelope stage, you’re in good shape. Having written your letter, you fold it in half and insert it into the envelope’but it doesn’t fit. That’s funny, you think, this is a set of stationery, I must have to fold it in thirds ? nope. Alright, I’ll fold it in quarters, that should do the trick.. Well, it fits but besides the fact it has taken on the look of a failed origami project, it’s folded so small it makes the envelope look mismatched. Who designs this stuff
anyway ? They can’t be letter writers.
Speaking of envelopes, I’m sure you’ve done this too. As you put the stamp on the envelope you smear the address. So then you have to find a big label to cover up the mess. When you eventually find something that will do, you line it up, but you get too close and the corner sticks. Fighting the urge to crumble the entire letter up, you gently pull it off but just as the last bit is coming up it takes a long strip of paper with it. I think it’s safe to say hyperventilation is going on at this stage because the strip of paper that has come up. It has actually torn a thin hole across the envelope so now if you put the label down it will stick to the letter inside. I think the safest thing to do at this point is to walk away. Just put it down and walk away before it gets worse. Because it will get worse.
It was on one of those days when I had to just walk away, that the mail man came along. "Bad day’ He asked." I simply nodded, not trusting myself to speak at that point. He said "I had one of those days yesterday. The door fell off the mail van and I had to do the rest of my route without it!" I smiled sympathetically, thinking to myself it was probably because he was bringing me letters from not 2 but all 20 of my pen pals...
