The Pilver

I’ve mentioned before, I was divorced several years back. (This post has nothing to do with divorce) When I left, I left with three suitcases and only went back to collect things a few times. Things like dishes, Max’s crib etc. were the items that were on my mind to save. I really didn’t dig into the boxes of random nostalgia that I had collected over the years. My ex then dissapeared as did all my memory boxes.

I do still have many pictures and a few yearbooks that had been stored at my parent’s house. The one thing I’ve lost that I miss most of all is old letters. Pre-email I was a letter writing fool. I had pen pals who I’d met from all over the world. I went to five different schools from the age of eleven to fifteen, and I collected pen pals at each school as well. Back in the early 90’s, phone calls were a quater a minute, sometimes more. Email was not mainstream. When you wanted to keep in touch and were young and broke, you walked your butt to the post office and mailed letters.

Luckily, I have a friend who saves everything. The guy has every personal piece of mail he has ever received. He has boxes of birthday and Christmas cards. He still has my letters. I wrote to many people, but to him the most frequently and for the longest span of time. We wrote to each other from about 1993-2003. There were times the letters were weekly and there were times they were half yearly. And he let me dig through them tonight.

It’s a strange thing to see what you felt was important enough to warrant a stamp and a few pieces of paper. It is strange to revisit letters you have written. Think about it, most of the time, if you see a letter from back when it came from someone to you. How many times will you get the opportunity to see what you wrote to another person from long ago. I was surprised at what I found. I’d say ninety percent of what I had to say was either silly stories about my life or absolute nonsense that I penned while in the middle of high school history class. The last ten percent was like reading a diary I never thought I would read again. I wrote a little about boyfriends and even more about family troubles.

Tonight, I am going to focus on the nonsense. I realize this post may interest zero people, but I spent forever scanning and cropping paper. I have to make a post out of it now. Here are the sillier things I wrote to a friend,many years ago:

OK, these are kinda fuzzy. Gonna type it out:

You know, you’re getting pretty bad at writing. That’s ok. I’m sure you’ve been busy losing your retainer.

This of course a response to the famous retainer losing episode of ’95.

He never did throw it away. I typed awfully, on an actual typewriter.

I had a habit of inserting U2 lyrics for no reason at all.

It was a good day when OK soda made it to Washington.

Sarah and Rachel are my sisters. I don’t think anyone needed to know this stuff. I made sure to fill envelopes with it anyhow.

I’m sure his parents would have loved the girl sleeping next to their cars.

And of course, I must sign them with a clever pun and a poor drawing.

Gonna get out some notebook paper and a sharp number 2 pencil and I’m gonna write a letter at work tomorrow and hope my boss does not catch me passing it between classes.