No, I did not have to use a pencil to correspond with my pen pal. I had only one ever and he came about because of the United States Information Service’s library in Madras in the 1950s. My cousin was a librarian there and she had made me and my siblings members. We used to borrow books from there. One day, she asked me if I would like to be a pen pal to an American of my age, which at that time was 13 and I said sure and so I became friends with a young lad from the USA named Johny Horrigan Jr. We exchanged a few letters, and both of us got bored of it and so the pen pal activity tapered off to an unceremonious end.
Fast forward to the 21st Century and I have made a great many online/blogger pals who I suppose are the modern equivalent of pen pals. We use computers and the internet instead of paper, pen and the postal services. The process is much faster too.
Like all pen pals do, I too hope that I will get to meet some of my online pals as they assure me they do too. Without personally meeting however, I have been able to establish many good long distance friendships thanks to the internet and blogging and I am grateful for the opportunity.
Shackman has suggested the topic for this week’s LBC Friday post. You can see what the other writers of the LBC have to say in their respective blogs. Maria, Pravin and Shackman.
We’re definitely on the same page on this topic. I enjoyed my pen pal experience immensely -as do I enjoy the modern version – blogging.
shackman recently posted..Penpals
As Bertie Wooster would say, you have tetigisti ed the rem acu!
I never had pen pals as in “don’t know who he/she is”. I had pen pals because my parents moved every five minutes during my childhood. No, not because my father was on the run, but because of his job and him being a bit restless thrown into the mix. How my mother endured it is the secret of their marriage – one [secret] I am not, and don’t wish to be, privy of.
Yes, so no sooner, and by nature I am a fast worker, had I made a friend or two, mainly at school, we moved again. A carousel had nothing on me. That way the pen became another friend. To this day I remember random birthdays – a pretty good pretext to phone them a few decades on. How do I track them? Their parents. Because unlike my own my friends’ parents stayed put. You may now play the violin of my life.
U
Ursula recently posted..Appearances
Okay, since I don’t play the violin, will playing the bongo drums or the tabla do?
I belonged to a pen pal club once. It was fun, but I like blogging better.
Cheerful Monk recently posted..The Good Old Days
I am not surprised. From what I remember of the pen pal adventure, it was rather a boring chore to respond and await a response.
I hadn’t thought of blogging as a version of having pen pals, but it’s all that and more. We would have loved this mode of communication in our young years, when we used to wait for the mail (snail) to reach our pal, and then wait for him/her to write us back. But it was always worth it! I loved those relationships (I had three). I can’t remember why we ended them—they just drifted away.
I have thought like you about how it would have been had we had the internet in our younger days and I believe that it would have been disastrous. I for one would have missed a lot of sports, picnins and camps and all kinds of other adventures that the modern children do not seem to have time for.
I had one pen pal as a child – a girl living in southern France. Like you and your pal, eventually we got bored with the idea and it petered out. A shame we never got to meet each other, but there it is.
Yes, blogging is like a surfeit of pen pals, and what great fun it is!
nick recently posted..Suicide watch
Many others have communicated with me about this peculiar phenomenon of one pen pal losing interest and the relationship just dwindling away.
I’m so glad I met some of my blog pals in the flesh.
And lovely to know them so well from their writing.
We form huge bonds in the blogger club
XO
WWW
Wisewebwoman recently posted..In the Beginning….Part 2
You are lucky. I have met only three of them so far and all were amazing experiences.
Never had pen pal I hadn’t met in person until I started blogging. Has proved to be very interesting experience.
Joared recently posted..“THEM THAT’S GOT — GETS”
Yes, blogging has been a very interesting experience indeed.
I’ve never had a pen pal, but sisters DH did, and they wrote nearly all their life, and at some point sister’s DH died, the correspondence continued until the other half of the “p/pal” died…they never met but they shared a good many years of communicating by pen…and the great aerogram
I should have mentioned the aerogram! That and the post card were indispensable those days.