Welcome to the Tweet Trends Podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweet Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Hey, it's been Pal Day. Let's get started. I don't know about you, but there is something special about getting mail that's directed for you.
It has your name on it. And I'm not talking about that junk mail mess that comes every day all day. And you know, you just toss that in the trash. I'm talking about when a friend or a loved one and somewhere in the world takes out a piece of paper, gets a pen or a pencil in hand, and actually puts their handwriting on the paper, then puts that paper in an envelope, addresses it, stamps it, all that good stuff, and puts it in the mailbox to say, there you go.
I'm sending you off to someone that I care about. Go see how they're doing. And then when you're on the receiving end, when the mailman shows up and you're flipping through, bills, bills, junk, bills, junk. Oh my gosh, a letter, you know?
And the part about it that I really love is seeing children receive mail. It is so magical because to them, I think that they think that it is magical. I can remember when our daughter was first learning to read and recognize her name. We would, sometimes we would put letters in the box with her name on it just so that she would get something.
Or, you know, my mom or my sister, other relatives, would send her cards in the mail. And it was so awesome to see her face light up as she's going through the mail-hand. And here's one for you, mommy, one for you, daddy, mommy, daddy. Who's resident?
And then they get to the one with their name on it. And it's like, oh, this one has my name on it. I love that reaction. But that was me all day, every day.
I said all of that to say that I really, really, really wanted a pen pal so bad growing up. And I'm probably dating myself by saying this. But we used to get these magazines. And I can't even remember what magazines I was looking at.
If this was like the right on magazine or what. But in these magazines that we would read, in the back, they would have a place where if you wanted a pen pal, you contact this group, this company, this organization, whatever. And they put you in contact with other people that wanted pen pals. And I was so intrigued by that.
I really wanted to. And I don't know if it cost or what. Because I never did actually attempt to get a pen pal through one of those little sections in a book. However, I did get the perfect pen pal by way of one of my favorite cousins.
And when I tell you that writing to her back and forth, it was the best. We wrote some of the most awesome letters back and forth to each other. They were hilarious. We would do things like use the names of songs in order to complete the sentences, to talk about the things that we were writing about.
And oh, gosh. It was to the point where I would send a letter off. And almost immediately I've got my eye on the mailman like, any day now, he's going to have a return letter for me. Any day now, you know, and you're kind of getting on, and seeing every time the mailman comes, I'm going to go get the mail.
And you're flipping through it. And it's just like, oh, nothing today. And although I didn't realize it by having a pen pal, that was a really good educational tool. Because it got me writing about stuff that I wanted to write about.
But in dealing with spelling and punctuation and stuff like that, we weren't just slapping words on paper. We were actually going through the motions of the proper format to write a letter, and all that good stuff. And because we are so heavily dependent on computers now, this is something that I have my daughter do. Like over the summer, I'll have her pick out a certain number of friends and make sure we have their mailing addresses.
And we will write letters to her friends. So she can say, hey, how are you doing? How's your summer going? And that way, I want her to learn about and love the art of actual letter writing.
You know, it's one thing that's at a computer and composed of the keyboard, but it is a completely different experience to actually write using your own handwriting on paper and send that off to somebody else. That's like, to me, you're creating history in the process of just reaching out and communicating with someone. So in the process of doing a little research for today's episode, I went online and I looked to see where do you actually go to find a pen pal nowadays? Because writing truly is a lost art.
And I was amazed because there were a lot of places out there where you could get a pen pal, whether it's writing a prisoner or, you know, stuff for schools, for them to use, things for adults. Now, I will admit, I'm a little leery of these pen pal situations now because it seems like people have such poor intentions for the things that they do. And not saying that they didn't have these intentions back in the day, but because we didn't have social media, it wasn't publicized the way that it is now. So I am leery.
I've heard stories about, I say stories. I've heard a story about someone who was writing a guy in prison and the guy's cellmate got a hold of one of the letters and got out of jail before his cellmate did and went to the house of the person that was writing his cellmate. You know, and it's kind of like, yeah, I'm not thinking that's pretty cool. That's John White awful.
Like I don't even know you and you're at my house and you're next on. Like, oh my gosh, you know, no judgment, but I don't know you, bottom line. So go away. Bye.
But it's just, it's kind of scary to think about it. Now, there have been other things, especially during the pandemic, where I saw these two girls created a program that was letters against isolation. That was the name of their program. And they had all of these volunteers and they wrote all of these letters.
And the letters were for the elderly because of course, in the height of the pandemic, we weren't allowed to go to the nursing homes and other nursing residences like that to be with grandma and grandpa and stuff like that. So these girls came up with this program and I think it's really great because in that situation, you're not going back and forth with somebody. You're actually giving of yourself to an elderly person and to write them a letter. Now, whether or not the people write back, I don't know, not sure how that part works for that particular program.
But just bottom line, I think it's a great idea, something really nice to do. But if you personally want to have a pen pal, I think some of the problems with the things that I saw online is that although they claim to be pen pals, they're digital. And to me, that takes all the fun out of it. However, with it being a digital pen pal, that does add a lot of safety to it because you're not sending me anything directly to my house.
So that means you're not getting in a car and coming directly to my house. However, though, if they have your name, then they can easily always do some type of a Google or Zaba search to try to find you and figure out where you live. They could ask you subtle questions in the letters and you may give enough information that they can kind of break it down from 10 to maybe two. And so still, you gotta be careful.
You gotta be careful. But I don't know. The idea of a pen pal in my mind is still awesome. But I think for me, I would err on the side of picking a pen pal that's actually somebody that I know and not necessarily a stranger trying to learn about their culture or whatever.
We have to do that on some other platform, some other way, so that we can still have that kind of hedge of protection around us because people nowadays are crazy. All right. Well, that was today's episode of Tweet Turns. I hope you enjoyed it.
And if by chance you were interested in doing something for pen pal day, then first off, it has lots of great good things that come from the whole idea of having a pen pal because it's an interactive activity. It improves your vocabulary. And if you are that adventurous person and are looking for someone outside of your realm of experience and reach, then it promotes diversity as well. So here's a couple things you can do.
If you want to be on the safe side and not kind of do that outreach thing, write a letter to your future self. I think your future self would appreciate it. And in doing so, create a customized envelope for the letter that you write to yourself, as well as anybody else that you decide to write a letter to because one, then that gets you drawing and coloring and that whole calming thing. And then the person on the other side, they're gonna get a extra treat when they see that envelope and it's like, oh my gosh, this is so beautiful.
Last but not least, learn calligraphy. Now, when I say calligraphy, I don't mean with the fancy pens and little ink, little cartridges and whatnot. Use your regular pen, go on YouTube, you don't even have to pay money for a class. Go there and you'll find all sorts of videos where people are teaching you how to do fancy lettering with your average everyday ballpoint pen.
You don't even have to spend a lot of money. All right, well, I hope you are able to test out some of those things. And if you want to test them out on me, by all means, you can take a picture of it or whatever, post it, tag me at heivet at h-e-e-v-e-t-e or just look for the hashtag tweet trends. Hope you had a great day.
See you back here again on Thursday.