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Old as dirt. Twice as gritty.

The handwritten letter
by Jo Slade - Story: 68521
Dec 22, 2011 / 5:00 am

 
Ha ha, or should I say ho ho ***ity ho, here’s your THIRD Christmas column. It will never end.
 
Being the season known as . . . well, as Season, I decided to send handwritten letters to all my friends and family. Not typewritten letters, no no, handwritten letters. This beautiful - and, I might add, exquisitely charming - idea brought tears to my eyes. How wonderful was I to do such a gracious elegant thing for my deserving friends and family.

Now it happens that some of my friends (the ones who know me far too well for my own comfort) are suspicious of me, just because in the past I’ve faked a few handwritten letters by typing with a quality handwriting font. One friend was totally fooled by the letter, but my malicious glee over his falling for it made it obvious I was up to something. Closer inspection revealed me as the fraud that I was. 

So this time I resolved to do the real thing, the right thing, the honest thing, to write an actual letter using pen and paper (well, after my attempts to find a truly fool-proof font failed). I sat, pen in hand, and waited for inspiration. And waited. And waited. It turns out that in some bizarrely twisted biological quirk, my brain is no longer able to produce thoughts while my hand is holding a pen, it now only works (sporadically) when fingers are on a keyboard. When holding a pen my brain goes into sleep-mode, and it’s not that easy to wake it, either. My brain not only doesn’t fire the neurons when a pen is involved, it seems to do just the opposite, because quite a few neurons careened to their death that day. 
 
It occurred to me that typing everything into an email first then copying it out by pen might work, and it sort of did except that I had included some cool links to things. When it came time to write a link, I was floored. How was I going to make it a hyperlink? The recipient of your letter will sit there for hours trying to press it, and nothing - nothing- will happen. They will then try to cut-and-paste it. Good luck with that, mister. Finally, they will try typing the link as they see it written in your letter. 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_W-IXqox-omigod-are-you-serious-I-have-to-type-all-this-HA&feature=player_embedded_this-is-hopeless-I-hate-joslade. 
 
They will fail. And they will hate you as much as it’s possible to hate a person, and will no longer be your friend. 
 
The only alternative was to drive to an actual newsstand (!!!), find the paper in question, buy it, take it home, cut out (with scissors) (!!!) the article and include it with the letter. My god, the links were cool, but they weren’t THAT cool. 
 
After what seemed like hours of writing I had “Dear _________, Merry Chri . . .”, at which point my hand developed a cramp. The cramp caused my handwriting to change dramatically, going from schoolteacher-perfect to physician-scrawl. Scanning the unholy mess that I had just penned, it occurred to me that the recipient would almost certainly have to ask what I had written, and since I had no clue it could be a potentially awkward situation.
 
The only solution I could think of to avoid cramp was to leave out the non-essential bits. All the silly chatter of email: gone. All the links: gone. 
 
Dear you,
 
Wow. Merry Christmas.
 
Love, 
 
Jo
 
Unfortunately my hand had long forgotten how to do a proper job of forming cursive letters, and the note looked kind of like this:
 
Dean you,
 
Wov. Menny Chistmes.
 
Loue,
 
Jo
 
So many typos, but no . . . a handwritten note can’t have ‘typos’. A handwritten note has ‘handwritten-os’, and getting rid of handwritten-os is not an easy thing. Do you start afresh? Dig out the bottle of dried-out White-Out? Cross out then rewrite the poorly formed words? Curse violently and leave it as is? In the end I found the easiest solution was to send notes to only the bestest of friends and family members, ie the ones who have given me bunches of money and/or chocolate. This simple step reduced my list to a totally manageable zero. And that, dear friends,  is what Christmas, when you practice good management, is all about.
Shaw
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About the Author

This bio was written by Jo Slade. As you can see she has written about herself in the third person. What normal person would do that? They just wouldn't. Who knows how many other persons might be involved in this thing, a second person? Another third? I worry about it. I - she - we - can't even keep it straight, this paragraph is a damn mess, there are persons all over the place. Round 'em up and shoot 'em. That's what I'd do, and by golly I think that's what Jo Slade would do as well.

Biographic nutshell: Jo has been messing around with words for a long time. Sometimes she'll just say words instead of writing them, it saves on paper.

This column: The columns that will appear here are of a highly serious and scholarly nature, therefore it is advised that you keep a dictionary and ponderous thoughts nearby.

If, after reading the column, you find yourself tossing and turning at night, burning with the need to email me, just do it. I answer to jo@castanet.net




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The views expressed are strictly those of the author and not necessarily those of Castanet. Castanet presents its columns "as is" and does not warrant the contents.

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