I’ve Had Pen Pals and I’ve Had Email Pals

and now I have you…

In high school, I had 5 pen pals. Suzanne from Avignon, France; Yoshie Murakami, Noriko Kanomata and Wakako Jinno from Japan, and Percy Aiken from New Zealand. I spent all my pocket money buying stamps! I didn’t think I was a writer way back then and only just remembered that I had pen pals when I read this prompt. I wrote compulsory essays for English but penpals weren’t compulsory. I must have liked writing.

I suppose I always imagined travelling as a diplomatic interpreter. I think they stopped writing or I did when I went to University. Fast forward to 2001 and the internet. I can’t remember what the site was called, but you could read through it and choose people to write to. It was like Tinder with words. I wrote to many girls in the US and Canada until my husband got involved. I did write to a couple of guys — Dave from Oshawa, Canada and Mike from Montgomery, Alabama are two I remember. We actually found out about 9/11 from one of his gal pals.

Then I joined an email group where you wrote an email and sent it to everyone in your group. Someone had organised the groups. I met some of the ladies IRL. I played croquet with Caroline and joined Red Hatters and met even more lovely ladies.