Christmas cards
is a subject that I could… and likely will… use for many essays
over the years. but for this particular one, I want to focus on
this year, and a funny set of circumstances created by the brilliance
of technology. (Sort of.)
Every
year… it seems… I get contacted by one or two (or more) people
looking for mailing addresses. With kids away at school, it’s
certainly an understandable request. And this year, with Jay moving
into a new home, the request did arrive… at first from my sister.
The
funny part of the story begins with her request… because as it
turned out, I didn’t have the address.
I
know. Shame on me. Terry and I hadn’t begun preparing our cards
at that time, and hadn’t been looking through our address books
or lists to see what information we needed. The idea that Jay
had a new location for mail hadn’t struck us yet.
So
everyone laughed, and a few days later we actually ended up getting
Jay’s address from that very same sister of mine. Seems she had
tracked him down before we could.
A
night or two later Terry and I arrived home to find a message
on our answering machine. It was a friend of the family. She was
hoping we could get her my sister’s address. Yes… same sister.
And…
umm…
No.
We
couldn’t.
See…
my sister moved cross-country last year after the holidays. And
while I know she must have sent us her new address, we couldn’t
find it at all. And so there we were, having just finished exchanging
details with said sister about an address she wanted but we didn’t
have, only to find out that we didn’t have her address either.
People
talk about how e-mail and other so-called advances are leading
to a dumbing-down of the world. And for the most part, I agree
with the thought. I do believe methods of communicating are often
approached too informally these days… with emoticons and all lower
case letters and little to no punctuation.
But
that isn’t the point here.
Instead,
we don’t send letters any more. That’s a shame. And it’s also
a problem.
We
laugh when people are shown losing their phones while crying that
all of their information is in it. Contacts and addresses and
phone numbers… all wiped out. And we cry when our hard drives
collapse… taking with it pictures and information that we never
bothered to back up, even though we knew we should.
But
the overall truth cannot be denied. The tendency these days is
simple to see. Once we have the information to establish contact…
an e-mail address… a phone number plugged into the cell phone…
we stop. Why bother to have a street address when you have a web
site you can head to? Seriously. How many times do you address
a letter to a person these days?
Could
you replace all of the phone numbers you needed if you lost your
cell phone? How about e-mail address is your computer crashed?
And
in the holiday season of 2009… a reminder was sent to me during
my preparations of Merry Christmas wishes to friends and family.
Paper and pen isn’t dead just yet. There’s safety and security
in having something written down… and a hug, or at least a kind
thought, in the mailbox from someone special because of it.