Oh, the sweet, earnest days of being a kid, when a missive from a foreign country was enough to make your heart leap. When you could sit on your porch, pen a note to someone across the globe, and form a bond despite the miles and cultures that separated you. Those were the pen pal days — the days when a letter in the mailbox was a magical thing.
Now, I’m not about to start some “back in my day” tirade about how we used to walk uphill both ways to school. But I am going to tell you this: Kids these days, they don’t know that feeling, that delight of finding a friend in a stranger through snail mail. They don’t understand the thrill of pulling that envelope from the mailbox, feeling the grainy texture of foreign postage, slicing the envelope open, and pulling out a message from another youngster, alive in a land they might never set foot in. Sharing a slice of their life so different, yet so similar to your own. Do kids today even know what a pen pal is?
I, Brian McCarthy, a lifelong resident of Schenectady, am a grumbler by nature and profession. I have a five-decade-long record of grumbling that stretches back to my elementary school days. I grumbled about the first computers, grumbled about Reaganomics, grumbled about Netflix killing Blockbuster. And yes, I grumble even now about the disappearance of pen pals.
Now, look, I get it. Modern technology has opened up the world. Kids these days can FaceTime with friends across the globe, share photos on Instagram within seconds, and collaborate on elaborate Minecraft worlds in real-time. It’s almost like having a pen pal from every corner of the planet. But therein lies the loss. The 21st-century kid is engrossed in a perpetual exchange of fast-paced, face-to-face encounters. The wonder of writing and receiving letters, each a precious time capsule, has been utterly supplanted by the 24/7 constant connectivity.
When I was a kid, discovery was slow but sweeter, like a ripe pear falling from an august tree. My first pen pal was a German lad named Klaus – we met through a school initiative. And though we never met in person, I experienced Jugendfeuerwehr drills, and Fasching festivals, and pocketed snippets of his village life in Bavaria. Every month, I would sit eagerly, nib in ink, jotting down my own American adventures to post across the Atlantic. In this lettered liaison, I glimpsed the wonder of the world from my humble one-story ranch in Schenectady. It’s a lesson I couldn’t have learned through any social media app or over any high-speed fiber optic connection.
There is something lost when you replace the handwritten scrawl depicting adolescent adventures and experiences with emojis and acronyms. The intimacy, the personality, the uniqueness of it, are swallowed up in the digital age’s immediacy and universal accessibility. Without a pen pal, you miss out on imagining the exotic accent of every letter, or envisioning the town square, the narrow cobblestone streets and the friendly neighbors based on their descriptions in pen and ink.
The pen pal experience taught me life skills that I’ve carried well into these crow-footed, arthritic years. Patience, the ability to wait for a letter for weeks and sometimes months; the understanding and acceptance of different cultures and people; the art of crafting a personal narrative; enjoying the distraction-free process of letter writing and the joy of reading – how many of these virtues do our kids carry in the daze of screens and likes today?
In this tiresomely quick-paced world of ours, slowing down to appreciate the joy of simple, heartfelt connections isn’t a bad idea. To write a letter, to wait for a reply, to build a bond the old-fashioned way — it’s a snail-paced joy that’s worth rediscovering.
There are still some websites out there that encourage kids to become pen pals. Teachers, parents, or if you’re a kid and happen to be reading this like I snuck my father’s copies of the New York Post – I urge you to give it a try.
I can assure you, getting that first letter in that mailbox will fill you with a kind of excitement that a Snapchat message or an Instagram like can never replicate. I believe it’s a feeling worth experiencing at least once in a young life. In a world that screams to go faster, is it not worth the while to slow down, savor, and feel the distinct pleasure of receiving a handwritten letter from a friend – a pen pal
