Flashback Friday

Social media.  It's two words we didn't hear a few years ago.  Now its everywhere.  In public we must look like tethered automatons to our bright little hand-held devices; receiving our marching orders like ants in a colony.  Wait anywhere and look around.  We are all in close proximity to each other but might as well be individually walled off.  Its gotten so our phones are actually secondary instruments. We text, surf, swipe, and click, and then maybe the occasional phone call.   I make no judgments:  I'm right there with everyone else.  I hate waiting - that little rectangular box alleviates the wait -  I wonder if it also serves as a "STOP" sign to interaction?  

I'll bet upwards of 70% of today's population has never received old school social media.  That would be, of course, a letter.  Sure, the kids today have received cards on special occasions and the quickly forgettable note.  But how many have received the written letter?  Today's Flashback features one such note. 

  

Letter writing used to be it.  There were no phones, texts, or FaceTime.  Of course that was back when people wrote in cursive, which they no longer do.  They don't even write.  Putting pen to paper required some skill and like any art some were better than others.  

The above note, penned by Marj to me while off to college in Iowa. I have many of these little one-pagers that let me know what was happening in Seaton in general and what Marj was doing in particular.  This would have been my junior year at IWC.  The Wombie was in Missouri for his year of tech school in Neosha.  Phil was starting his career at Grain Processing in Muscatine.  

And yes, the last paragraph was probably a veiled wish to have some company for the weekend.   I don't know if I went but I sure hope so. 

With the advent of the little pocket computers we call phones, the time for writing letters to friends and loved ones is gone.  Progress is really great.  Isn't it?