Let's talk about writing a letter. Your listener, comma, how are you, comma, pine, I hope? That, ladies and gentlemen, is how my late sister taught me how to write a letter when I was eight years old. We're going to talk about letter writing and email and all that kind of stuff on this, the Daily Grateful.
When I was just a little child, my sister used to write letters to her friends who lived far away. We originally lived in Detroit, Michigan, and then we moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, and then we moved between Battle Creek and Hastings in the middle of nowhere at a place called Mill Lake. And my sister had friends along the way. She had friends, especially from when she was a teenager in Battle Creek, that had moved and she would write them letters.
And I would see her writing letters and then the other thing, there was the teen magazines of the time of the 50s. I have no idea what they are, but she used to buy them as they were all over the place with Bobby Redell on the cover and that sort of thing. And they had an ad in there for pen pals, would you like to be a pen pal? And if you would, you know, and I don't know how you got on the list to be somebody's pen pal, but she had a pen pal that lived in Florida of all places.
And we lived in Michigan. My brother, my late brother, did the same thing except he became pen pals with a young girl in like 1964, with a young girl in England where the Beatles were, how cool was that? They were pen pals and he would have to write an international letter, which I think back in the day was like nine cents or something. But he would write, they would, you know, and I tell you today, everybody uses email.
The intimacy of handwriting has just kind of like gone away. And for me, it was never there because I'm going to tell you something. My sister had beautiful penmanship. My mother had beautiful penmanship.
My father had horrible penmanship. My brother, Al, beautiful penmanship, wrote in cursive, used to write letters all the time. And he was in the service. He would write home every day.
He would write home. There were letters flowing in every day from my brother in beautiful cursive handwriting. So you know, he had that talent. My handwriting is awful.
Now let's look at my children. All right. My son Tyler, not bad handwriting for somebody with Down syndrome. Is that even?
Yeah. I think he writes pretty well. I can read his handwriting. Matter of fact, where's that right over there is a painting that he did that he did handwriting on.
And I can read it back when he was doing a lot of art stuff. My son Kyle, reasonably good handwriting, but not that great. I'm just going to go. Gosh, Kyle's going to listen to this.
Good, but not that great. Good handwriting. Good handwriting. Nothing.
Me? Terrible handwriting. My handwriting is terrible. My daughter is Sandra.
Beautiful. Jamie. Beautiful handwriting. Zach, my youngest.
Arendisly horrible handwriting. Like his dad. He was my president to him. And I was just talking to him about it in the other room and he said, wait a minute.
What's your excuse? I'm left handed. You're right handed. How come you don't have beautiful handwriting?
And you know, I don't know why I don't have beautiful handwriting. Because I went to Catholic school and we had penmanship classes where we had to sit there and write in cursive and we had to do this. And I was terrible at it. And Sister Borgie Ann would stand behind me while I would write out a sentence in cursive.
And if she didn't like the way it looked, she would take her clothes fist and hit me in the back. Maybe that's why I've got bad handwriting. I can blame it on Sister Borgie Ann. But from there, my little letter writing or note writing was compromised because I had such terrible handwriting.
And then I remember in high school, I, my sister, got a typewriter when I was an in high school. It just a little portable, not electric, just a little portable typewriter. I said, that's the answer to everything. And I would use her typewriter and she would get mad at me for using her typewriter.
But I would still use her typewriter. And I would type, but you know, when you're in school and you want to write a note, you know, I, Angela Long was this girl that I had a crush on in school and I wanted to write her a note and just, you know, be cute. And I didn't have the typewriter because it was at home and I'm at school. And she would write me a note once in a while and I'd get these notes.
And then I would have to answer them and my handwriting was so terrible. I remember when we moved to Florida in 1964, I wrote an article, I was in, I was in seventh grade at Citrus High School and I wrote an article about something for our club at school and I sent it to the Citrus County Chronicle to be published. And I printed it, you know, and oh my God, they sent it back. They sent it back.
And they said, we can't read your printing and I was so embarrassed. So then I worked on my printing. I really, really worked on my printing. I know I was going to never get this cursive thing down, but I worked on my printing.
I got my printing acceptable. And then I remember in science class in seventh grade science class got into a discussion with the science teacher about what is a machine and you know, what, what is the definition of a machine? And I said a whole could be a machine because if a ball is going past it, it falls down into it. So that made it a machine.
That was my, you know, that was my idea. And my science teacher disagreed with me as well, I think I'm right. And we had a textbook. He said, write the, the author of the textbook, a letter with all of that and send it off.
So I did. I did. It was so cool. And so, you know, I sent my letter off and I'll be darned by the way, he was withholding my grade.
The teacher was withholding my grade until I got a reply. I am absolutely positive that the teacher didn't even in his wildest dreams think I would get a reply. But sure enough, I did. And the author of the textbook disagreed with me.
So I reluctantly took it to the teacher who gave me credit anyway. He said, because you went over and above trying and the important thing is, is that you learned something. I said, well, isn't that, isn't that special? Isn't that spiffy?
I think so. So that was good. And I remember when I was younger than that, when I was in fourth grade, do you remember Mad Magazine? Do you remember Mad Magazine?
If you remember Mad Magazine from the early 60s in all of the cartoons or even in articles, there would be a plant on the back of it on a shelf someplace and it had a name. It was called Arthur and his name is on the pot, Arthur. And I wanted an Arthur plant. I asked my mom, I said, Mom, I want an Arthur plant, she goes, I don't know how to do it.
So I wrote a short letter with my terrible handwriting to William Gaines, the publisher and editor in chief of Mad Magazine. And I said, I want an Arthur plant. Where do I get one? And my sister addressed the envelope for me.
And I signed it and I said, you know, I'm in fourth or third grade, whatever I was, and I sent it off. Well, I'll be darned if I didn't get a reply from William F. Gaines with total instructions on how to make an Arthur plant, which an Arthur plant, as it turns out, was an avocado. And you know, in great detail about, you know, taking the seed out, putting tooth pecs in it, putting it in water, putting it in the sun, you know, or in the sunny window, kitchen window.
And so my mother did that and we got that thing growing. And the next thing, you know, we potted it up. And the next thing, you know, you know, this was pretty cool. My sister made a label for it called Arthur and stuck it on there.
And damn it all, I had an Arthur plant all because I wrote a letter, an actual letter. Now in today's world, I guess I could have sent an email, but I don't think people take email as seriously as they take a handwritten communication. I really don't. So I mean, just my thoughts on the matter.
I don't know. What do I know? I just go through here and, you know, the thing about emails is the mirror because you get instant communication. And I use it in business.
I use it in business forever. I will send somebody an email and I will wait and send it right back. No stamps. No waiting for the male person.
You know, just boom, boom, boom. Today, I did four emails today, never business any answers, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But if I want to send an old girlfriend a letter, who I want to do it with an email or do I want to write out a letter to her, I think I want to write out a letter to her and put it in the mail and send it to her. Just me.
Have a great day. We will see you tomorrow.