I'm so happy that my high school and college years were not documented on a phone or youtube or facebook. I'm so happy that what is documented are letters I received from my dad and grandparents that were sent through the U.S. Postal system...not e-mail or text.
So since it's my birthday, I'm going to indulge in a bit of nostalgia and share some letters I received in college. Some of which are from my nineteenth birthday in 1986 at which time it became legal for me to drink in the state of Wisconsin (which meant I no longer needed my sister's state ID.)
How great are these? My dad did morse code in the Navy so he's always been a great typist. I would get these letters in college and I could picture him sitting at the typewriter at the reception desk or the one in the cubicle right next to it typing on these pages from a National Premium notepad. The note for my birthday came with these breathalyzers that they were trying to sell. You would blow into a balloon and then put it over this plastic tube that had colored sand crystals in it. It came with a chart that had a color code and the crystals would change color depending on how drunk you were. I'm sure you can see all the inherent problems with this system and the ones he sent me for my nineteenth birthday must have been sitting in a damp warehouse for a long time and the sand crystals were defective.
Normally my grandpa would send typed letters which were great because they had all kinds of unfixed typo's. This was particularly special because it was mostly from my grandma and it was handwritten. It also explains the origin of my name (which I've never liked, but I won't hold it against my grandma...her name was Atha Minerva so I consider myself pretty lucky.)
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