When do we count the start of our experience?
I remember when I was 4, maybe 5, lying on the yellow shag rug in my bedroom, writing my first letter. I wrote that letter to the mailman in crayon, on the back of a junk mail envelope. I wrote the second letter as a follow-up to the first one, which hadn’t received a response. I wrote three letters that winter, trying to get a response. I did not succeed.

The next memory I have of letter writing is the assigned pen pals in second grade. The teacher gave each student a sheet of penmanship paper with a space at the top for a drawing. The assignment was to draw a picture of something we wanted, and to write a letter about it. I drew a picture of a one-story house with green grass and a big yellow sun. The teacher proofread it and told me I had misspelled ‘horse’ as ‘house’. She pointed to the lawn in the lower corner of the picture and told me to draw a horse there. I did as I was told.

In middle school, passing notes became a big deal. I remember the orange lockers that lined the red carpeted main hall of our Jr. High School. I met my round-faced friend at the library steps after lunch. I handed her a letter. “I’m thinking of being a writer,” I said to her.
She glanced at the paper before she shoved it back at me.
“You didn’t read it,” I said.
“I don’t need to,” she laughed, “you can write a three-page letter about hair spray, and make it interesting.” She turned to the right and headed to class.

I went on to write for classes in high school and college, with a few miscellaneous pen pals here and there. I’ve written a few speeches, as well as some marriage ceremonies and church services. In addition to my blog and social media posts, I currently write a class outline and student handouts for a local photography group.