Love Letters, Greeting Cards: Where did they go?

I was in my teen years during the 90's and I remember going to the bookstore once in a while to buy different kinds of "stationary sets", different designs, colors and scents. On those pieces of scented papers I would write "love letters" to the subject of my affection. It is a wonderful feeling when you get to personally write down a letter expressing your feelings, with your own handwriting and strokes, that personal touch in a "letter" adds to its value and expression.

On special occasions like birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's day or whenever I feel like it, I would go to the bookstore and spend hours standing there, choosing between hundreds of greeting cards available looking for the "exact" message for the occasion and recipient. When I finally choose the "best" card for the persona and the occasion the next task will be composing your own message that you will have to write down in the blank part of the card intended for such purpose, Its always very difficult to write down anything in this part because everything you want to say is almost always there in the printed message which took you hours to pick so this is what happens;

1. you try to compose your own message out of thin air, you start to squeeze your brain for thoughts.

2. you try writing those messages on a scratch paper because there is no "cancel" button to press if you make a mistake writing on the card, and a "liquid paper" marking won't leave a good impression, so the best way to do is to use a draft.

3. you feel you are running out of time because the occasion is in two-days time and she/he has to receive it on the exact date, so by hook or by crook it should be mailed that day.

4. after so much effort all you came up with is a two-sentence message, you ran to your closet, searched for "old" love letters other people sent you and pick up some lines to augment your two-sentence message.

5. well of course, If you're madly in love to the recipient of your greeting card these things won't be a problem, you'll always have a million thought and a million words to say.

After you're done with the message part and sealing your letter or greeting card "with a kiss", the next thing to do is to go to the Post Office to mail it "Express", "Special Delivery" or "Registered". It usually takes a lot of effort to do this not unless you live downtown, the Post Office is usually a 10 minute walk from home, that is if you run hahahaha.

In this age of advance technology where you can send a message through the "air", I came to realize how difficult it is to send a love letter or a greeting card back in the "times", Do I regret doing it? No, I don't., in fact I miss exerting the effort, spending so much time in preparing to send a single greeting card, the effort counts, It's so different from the "high-tech" ways that we use today, I miss sending my personal touch on every letter, it was a time when I spelled every word correctly on my letters, so different from the way I spell words on text messages 2day.............(je!je!je!)