Correspondent of the Day: Hand-Written Notes Show Old-Fashioned Love

Hand-Written Notes Show Old-Fashioned Love
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Recently I strayed into one of those cavernous bookstores resembling an antiseptic neo-Pavlovian condition room with bright lights and white walls. What jumped out was a single row. I estimated it to be 54 feet long packed with hundreds of species of cards -- the invention of psychological engineers and polished up by artists and wanna-be poets churning out private, random, gratuities of filial devotion. There were also countless cards for funerals, birthdays, graduation, get-well, weddings, and the consequences of weddings.

Near Father's Day, I stood back and observed a crowd of folks frantically pawing through for just the right card printed in imitation handwriting so that if Dad were in his second childhood, he might be duped into believing the sentiment was not hand-me-down, but custom-made -- a lyrical outpouring of the sender's over-flowing heart.

It seems a hand-written note from the heart is old-fashioned. After all, it brings money only to the Post Office.

Cecil E. Johnson.
Williamsburg.