Pen Pals, did you have any, or still have some?

F

fishfulthinking

Member
Location
Calgary, AB, Canada
Who had them? Do youstill have some? Do you think letter writing is a lost art?

I saw blog I think it was where a woman was trying to resurrect letter writing and offered up a kind of pen pal “hub”. I was an avid letter writer for about 15 years of my life. It was the way I got to learn about other countries way before the wonder of the internet. I had up to 50 pen pals from all over the world. Some of my highlights and lowlights so to speak were very interesting. I had a pen pal form Russia, back when it was the USSR and the letters would come with many parts blackened out with heavy black marker.

I had many small mail-able gifts and trinkets sent to me from all around the globe. It was popular practice to exchange what were called Friendship Books(interestingly we referred to them as FB’s).These were cute little booklets (half the size of a recipe card or smaller) of a dozen or so pages stapled together. Some would just be plain paper, others had stickers adorning them or pretty art work or a poem or saying. A person would start up on and put their name and address in it, and even include a few interests, then send it to a friend who would do same and pass it on, and so on and so on.If you were lucky to get a fuller one, you had many “pen pals” to choose from.You were responsible to return to the original sender their full FB. Some FB’s would take a few months to return, some a few years.

I had a lovely 10 year pal who always travelled and sent me pictures and trinkets. Then one day her husband sent me a letter telling me her illness had taken her life. This started the end of my pen pal world. I could not bear the loss of more friendsthis way. Slowly I phased out an amazingpast time. I do think about trying again but am still on the fence.
 

Hi back at ya Ina
Yes perhaps so to some degree. There was always a kind of thrill getting a letter in the mail. Here we just plug in, turn on and click and chat.
I have to say, in my pen pal days I was lucky to meet 1 of my many pals.
In my past days of the forum life, I met about 15 forum friends. Ok so maybe this is better ;)
 

I had a pen pal back in 8th grade but can't remember how we became pen pals. Her name was Judy and she lived in Milwaukee. We wrote each other long, crazy letters on lined notebook paper. Somehow in my second year of high school we drifted apart.

It was fun reading and writing those letters but truthfully l, I am too lazy now to hand write a real letter. For shame!
 
I took both Spanish and French (2 yrs of Spanish, 6 yrs of French). Spanish teacher gave us addresses for pen pals in South America. Mine was a boy in Cordoba, Argentina and he was quite sweet. Sent me lots of great pics which I no longer have, unfortunately. I also had a pen pal in Lyon, France…a girl who was very interested in visiting the US some day. Don’t know of she ever did, though. Lost touch with both after graduation.

I remember both their names, though. With email and Facebook, I doubt kids nowadays send (paper) letters to pen pals via postal snail mail.
 
My Mom had a British penpal during WW2. Her name was Edna Bigmore, and she came to the US to visit us (second time they were face-to-face) in 1976.

I adored her! She took me shopping for school clothes with Mom's credit card. She didn't use it; she paid for my clothes! She stayed for two months, August and September. I "moved" to the basement rec room and gave her my room on the main floor; she couldn't do stairs. We went to Gatlinburg, TN, Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, and took day trips around this area. She loved everything!

One thing was funny; Mom positioned the car as if pulling into the carport from the road, put it in park, plopped Edna behind the wheel, and got pics of her as if she were driving. LOL! I learned to say "ta" and she learned to say "okay." She said 'okay' sounded so agreeable!

I heard of her passing in 1995. I was stationed in Giessen, Germany, and flew to London for her funeral. Mom couldn't make the trip; she'd just had another mini-stroke, so I went. Edna never married, but I met her nieces and nephews and cousins and sisters. It was very bittersweet, and one of her sisters gave me a big box of letters; Edna had saved all of Mom's letters to her. What a gift!

Then when my Mom passed, I found all of Edna's letters she had saved. Now I have both, and working on a book for both families about their incredible friendship. Dang, I miss both of them. *Sniff.*
 
I enjoy writing to penpals whether it's email or snail mail.There are many people throughout the world who still feel the same. I don't find a forum comes up to what you can get from a penpal.
 
Yes, I had and enjoyed writing to pen pals as a child / teen I still have a couple of ladies I snail mail write to they are twin sisters one lives in NSW and the other in SA the same state I live in ( she is only 200 km from me) we always seem to have something to write about
 
Hi Pookie, yes I have a pen pal and she is the only one Pen Pal. I ever had...
When I lived in Maine , I was a house keeper at a motel..i had a check out room to clean . when I went into the room there was a note and a picture of a young girl on the table. she said, "Dear cleaning lady, would you like to be my pen pal?" she said her name was Dottie and she was 11 yrs old, and that she lives in Virginia and she left me her address ,so I of course wrote to her immediately and she is now married and has a 3yr. old daughter and I just recently found out she is pregnant with another baby girl. And the best part is that I got to meet her and her hubby shortly after they got married...My hubby and I of course got an invitation to her wedding , but we could not leave at that time.... but they both came to Maine to meet me about 2 yrs after they were married, and that is a day I will never forget. that was the day she told me she was pregnant..!! ...We wrote back and forth quite often back all those years too, but now of course now we keep in touch via e-mail.. But yes , its sad the letter writing has stopped .. I use to always look forward to getting a letter from my pen pal , Dottie and from my friends , it was the anticipation I felt waiting for the mail and then with the envelope in my hand and the pages of papers to read and the laughing out loud , I loved it..... ..and with emails, its just so different...I still have all her letters and she has told me she still has all my letters too. lol..
 
fishfulthinking said:
Fern, I have to agree with you, there is something special about putting the pen to the paper and sending off that personalized message to someplace far away. I have often thought of trying again :)
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Hi, I would encourage you to try again, with our computers, it is so much easier to get a penpal/s anywhere in the world. I've just bought a couple of 2016 calendars to send overseas to my pals, it's something we do for each other every year.
 
Don't have any now, but in the early days of the internet I corresponded with a few folks across the country via email. It was interesting getting to know folks from elsewhere, not unlike this kind of forum.
 
I've had too many to count but due to lack of time I've only kept 2 and now we email each other instead of using the US mail. I was pregnant with our second oldest son when we started writing and he just turned 48 so it's been a long time. One retired to FL from upstate NY and the other lives in TX. I have met one of them in person a few times, we have visited each other's homes and met each other's families. Also when I was a teen I had a pen pal in England but I can't recall his name now. He was going to be a civil engineer, that's all I remember.
 
I have an old friend who lives across the country, who is not computer literate and who loves to write letters and cards and do some pretty artwork on them. We exchanged for many years until we fell out for a time, but now we're back to a phone call now and then, as she has visual problems and writes less.
 
tinytn said:
Hi Pookie, yes I have a pen pal and she is the only one Pen Pal. I ever had...
When I lived in Maine , I was a house keeper at a motel..i had a check out room to clean . when I went into the room there was a note and a picture of a young girl on the table. she said, "Dear cleaning lady, would you like to be my pen pal?" she said her name was Dottie and she was 11 yrs old, and that she lives in Virginia and she left me her address ,so I of course wrote to her immediately and she is now married and has a 3yr. old daughter and I just recently found out she is pregnant with another baby girl. And the best part is that I got to meet her and her hubby shortly after they got married...My hubby and I of course got an invitation to her wedding , but we could not leave at that time.... but they both came to Maine to meet me about 2 yrs after they were married, and that is a day I will never forget. that was the day she told me she was pregnant..!! ...We wrote back and forth quite often back all those years too, but now of course now we keep in touch via e-mail.. But yes , its sad the letter writing has stopped .. I use to always look forward to getting a letter from my pen pal , Dottie and from my friends , it was the anticipation I felt waiting for the mail and then with the envelope in my hand and the pages of papers to read and the laughing out loud , I loved it..... ..and with emails, its just so different...I still have all her letters and she has told me she still has all my letters too. lol..
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What a sweet story tinytn. And all just because a little girl left a note in a motel room. My 2 pen pals, that are email pals now, like to use all sorts of pretty handwriting fonts and colors in the emails. We each use a different color font and style each time and that is why it's so much easier for me to read if my color font is different than the one I am reading. We answer right on each others emails so each paragraph winds up being 2 different colors.
 
My paternal grandmother was my pen pal while I was growing up. We wrote until she died. She was a tiny, but feisty woman. I think about her all of the time and how special she was to me.
 
I had a pen pal for a very short time when I was a kid, but soon got bored writing letters! I much prefer to send an e-mail rather than a letter if possible, or phone the person concerned. I long for the day when ALL communications, like Christmas and Birthday cards, are electronic, they are such a waste paper, imo.
 
I had 3 pen-pals through a high school program. One, a teenage girl around my age, 15-16 who lived in Nottingham UK who wrote about finishing school, a teenage boy in Japan who rode horses, and a woman in England who had a family that vacationed in Spain. It was all very exotic sounding to me, as we had never vacationed anywhere .. just moved from Province to Province.

Lately, I've been looking at a pen pal site, but it appears most people use it like a dating site, so, I gave up on that idea when I was messaged by a man 18 yrs. my junior. Not within the age frame I specified.

I met my best girlfriend on the internet some 16 yrs. ago. She messaged me about my interest in leaded glass and pottery. After emailing for about a year, we met during my first trip to South Australia, and were able to get together a fair bit during my 7 yrs. there. Her first grandson was a baby when we first met, and she recently sent me his graduation photo. She and her husband have retired from sheep and crop farming, and she sold her pottery kilns, but still does leaded glass work. A most remarkable couple, whom I love dearly. Time flies, but our friendship remains the same. This all started via pen-pal emailing.

Bluecheese, I've taken to sending nice ecards (I subscribe to Jacquie Lawson based in the UK). Paper card prices have become atrocious. Of course, for something like a wedding, I send a paper card.
 


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