Paper, and what it hath wrought

Ms. Marrus, who has been writing letters since she went to summer camp, is convinced that there is a growing market for what she calls "the simple joy" of the handwritten note. -- NYT

Deception! There most certainly is not. Well, perhaps there is, but it's certainly not growing. Or, at least, not for long. . . if I can help it.

Speaking as a thoughtful, bright, [handsome] and highly learned individual who can only just barely write with traditional implements, and having countless friends equally bad with such tools, I can say, unequivocally, that there is no joy, simple or otherwise, in a handwritten note.

There, just now, I typed about 100 words. Took me a minute or two, probably. In that time, I also went to the bathroom. Last week, thanking three professors for writing letters of recommendation to graduate schools I have no chance of getting into, I handwrote cute little notes on expensive-ass cards telling them how much I appreciated them for indulging my futile endeavor. Took me two sweaty hours. And my hand cramped up. And you couldn't even read them. Thank God I made brownies.

Point being: I've only had computers since, say, 8th grade, a period of about 10 years--less than half my total years, and none of my most formative. Prior to getting my Quantex 486 DX2/66 from the pages of Computer Shopper, I won awards for penmanship. Now, looking at my gnarled e-Hooves clickety-clacking away at this keyboard, I see that it's hard to be both good at typing and good at writing and impossible to be skilled at both. People who are really good typists, if they have any sense at all, see the futility of dropping one's keyboard in favor of one's fountain pen and India inks. People who are really good word processors, further, measure the tools laid out before them on the computer screen against what their enfeebled man-paws can do with a pen and laugh.

I don't know what "summer camp" Ms. Marrus went to, but her bus certainly didn't reach it via the Information Superhighway. Nor did the respective busses of her aged peers. Hence, such people, though they may have adapted to a life of ecommerce and hypertasking, will inevitably long for the simpler life of their youth and young adulthood, when people hamfistedly communicated through marks scrawled with messy inks leaked from awkward cylinders.

Once these people die, so too will the paper economy.

In South Korea, right now [the most wired country on earth], countless people are taking dates to internet cafes, where they sit next to each other and instant message. Disturbing? Yes. Pitiful? Sure. A window into our near, near future? Word.

And when that day comes--our atmosphere an orange-hued reaper--I'd like to see Ms. Marrus stuff a hand-engraved, parfumed, cotton-papiered card into my hermetically-sealed Lexan bubble.