15 December 2010

[talk: Saving Notes.]

When I was a little girl, my mom sold Mary Kay products.  Now - maybe that's not accurate.  I think she had some products that she planned to sell, but instead I got into them and used them to make my 10 year old skin look ... younger?  *grin*

These flamingo-pink products were neatly organized in a gold quilted briefcase ... and long after those products were gone, it became my secret place that I would keep my sacred treasures.  Not just any treasures ... handwritten notes.  I would keep any written word that I didn't want to forget ... an encouraging note - even in grade seven, it's worth millions - , funny stories, admissions to "who likes who" ... I kept a lot of them.  

When I got engaged, I told my future hubby about my gold case.  I asked if he wanted me to get rid of all of those memories ... start fresh.  But he gave me a peculiar look and was, like, "why would you need to throw away those thing that made you who you are today?"  And I was thankful for that.  I'm a sentimental fool - and throwing away bits of paper from the corner of my grade 9 science textbook may have put me into a puddle of tears.

In fact, that bulging gold case is in my home and every year or so, I open it up.  It actually gets more organized each time I open it ... and I usually have my own little laugh at some of the crazy things my friends and I wrote to each other.  I cry when I read things from friends who have passed on, and smile at the notes of upcoming sleepovers, excitement for Friday's youth group, *laughing* ... there are probably notes in there from YOU!

I realized today that I still do the same thing - except in a more 21Century sort of way.  Emails, FB messages, texts ... I save them.  And when I realized that I was saving these (what for, I'm not sure - it's not like I'm going to print them out and put them in a binder ... hmmmmmm *wait a second ... *) - I started wondering what my kids were going to do.  Would they ever write a note?   Or will it only be texting by then?  Ha.  Is it only texting NOW?  What will happen to penmanship (oh, I practiced for HOURS to make sure that my left-handed printing was perfect - despite my teachers telling me left-handed writing would always look like chicken scratch ... )?  And spelling? Is it a lost art?  Oh don't get me started on the text-language-spelling.  I'm a victim to it myself.

Well.  Even this blogging, digiscrapping, Facebooking, texting woman still puts value in the written word stuck to paper.  I love a handwritten note ... and maybe even more so now, because it's such a rare thing.  I love a great pen too.  Almost more than my Mac.  AL-most.  *wink*.  When I was in highschool I always used a teal ink, ball-point pen.  My friend, TMD, introduced it to me ... it's still my pen of choice to this day ...

So - I'm thinking that it's time again to have a chuckle over the images these gold-cased-notes spark in my mind.  I just may pour myself a chai tea and blow the dust off of that case and smile at my 11 year old printing and the rad language I used *grin* (rad.  that was a joke.).

*smile*.

Have a great one !!

2 comments:

cara said...

Great post, Tawn. This is something you and I definately have in common. I'm not sure where my "treasure box" is after moving so many times, but I think it's time I started looking. I'm actually looking forward to looking through that stuff with my kids when they are older. They will probably mock me a bit, but that's ok. I was feeling sad that they won't experience hand-written goodies like we do, but then realized that I can handwrite things to them to start their own treasure boxes.

Tawn said...

... yes! you and I both have an appreciation for this, don't we :-).

Sad how the art of a handwritten note is a dying trend ...