Thursday, November 15, 2007

My Daily Advertising Portal (or, Mail Used to Be Fun)

When I was a kid, it always seemed like mail was fun. Birthday cards from grandparents. Letters from pen pals. Letters from your parents at camp. Fun magazine subscriptions like highlights.

Oh, the memories. My grandma would always put stickers for me and my sister in her letters. There was something magical about getting the mail from the mailbox and even more special was getting your own mail addressed just to you.

Today I went to get the mail, no catalogues or large bulky mail just lots of envelopes, and I think, maybe there's something good.

Yet, even in all my unnecessary hopes it was just ads in envelopes and on postcards. Things like promotions to clothing stores, credit card and phone ads. Nothing bad, but nothing good.

There's still people who had tried to remain the last remnant of people who have chosen not to get a cell phone and some how they survive. Similarly, many people are giving up there house phones and just using their cell phones. As e-mail, electronic banking, and e-bill pay become more popular, do you think that maybe I could give up my mailbox.

"Thanks post-office, but I don't really want one of these." I'd say. But somehow, I don't think the post master general would let me get away with giving away my physical address.

It's just...I don't really need this portal of space that solicits my consumer dollars. And frankly, that's all it is...one big advertising portal. As if gmail reserved all the junk mail I might get in one day and send it to me everyday right when I got home from work.

Oh, how I wish mail could be fun again. Perhaps I can talk my grandma into sending me some stickers in the mail.

5 comments:

Terence Towles Canote said...

I hate to say it, but I think junk mail was more interesting in the old days. Back then we got catalogues. Now we just get envelopes stuffed with promotions...

Jordan M. Poss said...

Seriously. I still have a deeply-ingrained yearning to check the mail every day. Sadly, nothing exists to satisfy the craving for good mail any more. Except packages from amazon, which come UPS, so the mailbox really is superfluous, I guess.

nate said...

Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer fills in his mailbox with bricks and mortas and boycotts the USPS for the very same reason, only after returning Pottery Barn catalogues to the Potter Barn.

K M F said...

nice one

Um Naief said...

i used to really love getting the mail. i'd always run out there and grab everything... dying to see if there was something for me. and you're right, even at camp, it was always such a great time to get mail from your parents...

those were the days.