Somewhere in the world, there's a pen pal agency that owes me several dollars.
As a child, I had an insatiable love of letters, and I signed up for every back-of-magazine pen pal service I could find.
I would send off my contact information and the $2 registration and then write long, detailed letters describing myself when I would get my new friend's address, always taking care to enclose a wallet-size photo.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of letters back. But I was sure as hell brave in the attempt, scrawling countless pages to my imaginary buddies and dreaming of the letters that would arrive in my mailbox.
My love for all things epistolary manifests itself today in a basket of about a dozen various types of cards and stationery, corresponding sticker seals, sealing wax, a choice of stamps and one very large address book.
My fascination extends to both sides of mail - receiving and sending.
Opening my mailbox every afternoon, I'm dismayed to find not much more than a Netflix DVD or the occasional bank statement.
But on the days when I discover a card from a friend or a letter from my grandma, I'm thrilled. From the second I see my name and address handwritten across the front, I feel special.
Opening the envelope is generally preceded by an important debate: Do I rip it open immediately, or do I find a knife or a pair of scissors to perform a more formal operation?
Either way, there's a treasure of words crafted expressly for my benefit waiting for me inside. And it's a treasure I get to read as many times as I want, folding and unfolding the paper as often as I like.
Sending a letter isn't just a matter of deciding what to say, but of choosing the right stationery, and of course, the all-important stamp. Right now, all my addressees have the option of a superhero or a chocolate kiss.
The act of selecting the perfect correspondence materials for my reader is just as important to me as the actual writing, and it usually takes just as much time.
E-mail may be a more efficient way of communicating, but for me, it will never take on the role that letter writing has in my heart, no matter how high the post office increases the cost of stamps.
E-mail has no choice of stamps, of witty cards, of handmade papers. It's an impersonal method of communicating, and I resent that so much information is imparted to me through it.
Without letters, we wouldn't have these words from the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Robert Browning: "You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me - my heart was full when you came here today. Henceforward, I am yours for everything."
Without letters, I wouldn't be moved to tears by Abraham Lincoln's note to a mother who lost five sons in the Civil War: "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you ... the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."
Without letters, Martin Luther King, Jr. wouldn't have addressed a group of clergyman arguing that the fight for civil rights ought to take place solely in the courts in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," saying: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Nothing I write to friends and family is as important or as beautiful as the words of Browning, Lincoln or King, but in spite of such a lack, my letters do come from the heart.
They are meant to bring happiness to those that receive them, and to make them feel more valued than a five-minute electronic message ever could.
Hanna Ricketson doesn't collect stamps; she just admires them. Reach her at: hanna.ricketson@asu.edu.
