MAIL CALL!

I don't know about the rest of you, but I really like getting mail
"the old fashioned way."
You know, via the United States Postal Service.

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When I was little, I would run into the Post Office with my dad, just hoping that there would be something in Box 330 with MY name on it. Highlights magazines came once a month, but my favorite time of the year was when my grandparents traveled to Arizona and would send me postcards from the road.

Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, all the way to Mesa...I knew their route by heart! Pictures of cornfields, Dorothy and Toto, snow covered mountains, and cacti covered our fridge. I loved the feeling that I was on vacation right along with them, even though I was at home enjoying the cold, Minnesota winter.

Here at college, when the sign on the front desk of Bailey Hall reads, "The Mail is Here!" I race to my mailbox and peer inside. I anxiously await the arrival of my copy of the Martin County Star, a church newsletter, or the occasional note from my mom.

But the best days are the ones when letters from Myrna show up in Box 105! Myrna, a lady about my grandma's age who attends my church back home, was my FAVORITE lunch lady in elementary school. The day she retired, I wrote her an impassioned letter, telling her the food at MCW would never taste good without her cooking it. I was one angry 2nd Grader! She wrote me a letter right back, explaining that she was sorry she had stopped working at school but that she needed more time at home with her family. She kept sending me letters, too. They'd show up when I got my picture in the paper for playing a solo in the 5th Grade band concert, when I made the 7th Grade Straight A Honor Roll, and when I was elected Chapter FFA President.

I figured the letters would stop once I got to college, but they didn't. The letters got newsier -- telling me about all the happenings in Trimont and with Myrna. She always ends her letters with, "Well, that's enough boring stories from a 70-something."

I tell you what, friends, I never get bored reading stories written by someone who took the time to think of me.

You like getting mail?
Send some of your own.
Become pen-pals with someone you met at WLC or SLCCL.
Write your Grandma just to say "Howdy!"
It feels just as good to stick a letter in the mailbox as it does to take one out.

Stationed by the plow,
LIZ