Sunday, Sep. 20, 2009

Keeping up with e-mail when you're a snail mail kind of guy

It's my worst nightmare.

I'm strapped in the electric chair. Seconds are ticking away on the clock on the wall of the small, quiet room.

10 ... 9 ... 8 ...

Across town, the real criminal confesses. The wheels of justice are set in motion.

7 ... 6 ... 5 ...

The governor springs into action.

4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

The phone on the wall is silent. 1.

Moments later, the phone rings.

"Governor," the officer says, "You're a tad late."

"How could this happen?" the guv says. "Didn't you get my e-mail?"

Aaaarrrrgggghhh!

Speaking as a guy who gets a couple hundred e-mails a day at work, I still don't like them. Give me old-fashioned snail mail anytime. E-mail only gives you a piece of the message.

With e-mail, you'll never see a smear of mustard on the first page letting you know what the writer was doing when he sent it.

And how in the world could you put that special scent in a love letter so it fills the room when it's opened?

Would the Gettysburg Address have had the same impact if Abe didn't have an old envelope to scribble it on?

My affinity for the U.S. mail goes back to my roots.

On summer days when my buddies and I were just bummin' around, we'd often head to the railroad tracks north of Highland. It was a favorite place to catch tadpoles in the ditches along the tracks. And to place pennies on the rails and have the train squash them to smithereens.

At high noon, we watched a guy walk toward the tracks with a long, thin canvas bag and a long pole. He told us the bag was filled with letters. He hooked the pole through a loop in the bag and hoisted it up to another pole next to the tracks. He attached it top and bottom so it was stretched tight vertically. Then we sat on the hillside and waited.

In a few minutes, the 12:10 westbound whistled by at full speed. The guy sitting high in the caboose had a stick hanging out the window and -- "thump" -- he snagged the mailbag right in the middle and it was gone.

It happened so fast that if you blinked, you missed it. And you probably didn't see another mailbag thrown from the train onto the grass. The pole guy came out to retrieve it. Letters to everyone in Highland were on their way to the post office. And we went back to looking for tadpoles.

I didn't actually send mail until my brother joined the Army. I remember telling him about how my other brother moved into his spot on the bench by the kitchen table. And we were taking good care of his Mercury.

I wanted it to get to him really fast, so I sent it airmail. They had special envelopes with an airplane and blue and red marks around it for air mail letters. And the airmail stamps cost 2 cents extra.

I figured they gave airmail special treatment, probably strapping it into a first-class seat all by itself. I was sure it would be in my brother's hands in Calfornia in a couple of hours.

Wow.

But that's nothing compared to e-mail. Some days when I go in to work I have 50 or 60 waiting for me. Some important. Most not. How do they even find me?

There's something just so impersonal about all this e-mail. Just think if throughout history they would have had e-mail instead of letters. We might have:

The e-mail of Paul to Thessolonians@sinners.com

E-mails to Santa Claus@whadyawant.org

E-mails of recommendation from formerboss@doesntrelatetofellowemployees.com

E-mails from camp@bigmosquitoes.net

Love e-mails from mrright@rosesarered.com

E-mails to the editor@whocares.org

For convenience's sake, I guess it's good that everyone uses e-mails for instant communication nowadays. But I'd rather be catching tadpoles down by the tracks.