I’m guessing that only a few kids today know what a pen pal is. After all, how
many kids do you know who write letters and even then, probably under duress. Or, when’s the last time you received a letter let alone a thank you note? Text messages seem to fit today’s generation’s short attention spans. It wasn’t always this way.
I grew up in a time when letter writing was a given. Once, I asked my mom what she wanted for Christmas. “Don’t buy me anything,” she said. “Just write me a letter every month. That’s the gift I want.” So, I did. She saved every letter and read them over and over. After she died, we found a box of the letters.
I first learned about pen pals in the sixth grade. Miss Myren, my homeroom, and geography teacher connected our class with another sixth-grade class in Anchorage, Alaska. It boggled my mind that Alaska even had cities. Since Alaska was called The Last Frontier, I thought Alaska was mostly wilderness. You can excuse my thinking when the state was largely uncharted, unmapped, and unexplored. I tried not to show my ignorance when I wrote to my pen pal. We exchanged letters every month until 7th grade when they slowed to once a semester and once during the summer. By high school, they stopped. My fault entirely. I saved those letters for years with the vague thought that perhaps I’d go to Alaska someday and visit my old pen pal. Those letters were saved in a box with other special items. Boy, was I perturbed when mom, tired of the box sitting in the basement had it burned in the incinerator.
Well, maybe I couldn’t visit my old pen pal, but Grandma Allen, in the story,
Alaska Invitation, visits her old pen pal, Victoria, in Anchorage.
Ironically, my daughter and her family now live in Anchorage.