She Thinks

I love receiving a handwritten thank you note.  It warms my heart to think that someone would take the time to sit down and write a personal sentiment, in a card, and put it in the mail…to me.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to feel any kind of yearning to do the same for others.  I have always failed miserably at writing Thank You Notes and, I believe, I have also failed at teaching my children to write them as well.

Clearly, I was a lousy parent.

Writing a Thank You Note is a classy thing to do.  It’s thoughtful and sweet.  It’s what my mother taught me was “the right thing to do.”    And, according to my mother, anyone who wasn’t raised in a barn knows that there are some basic situations when sending a handwritten Thank You Note is REQUIRED.

They are (for your reference) as follows:

1) Any gifts received from a grandparent.

(otherwise the parent will hear about it and that’s never good for the kid)

2) Any gifts received from relatives sent through the mail for birthdays or holidays.

(otherwise the parent will hear about it and that’s never good for the kid)

3) Any gifts received for Bar Mitzvahs (or other such cultural “coming of age” celebrations), Weddings and/or Showers and new baby gifts.

(otherwise the parent will hear about it and that’s never good for the kid)

Fortunately, (I thought) my kids always lived near their grandparents and were able to give them a huge hug and thank them directly for any gift they received.  So I didn’t “make” them write thank you notes to their grandparents (bad parent!).

And, my brother’s the only one who ever sent them gifts on holidays…so he probably thought they were raised in a barn, because I’m sure he never received a Thank You Note from either of them…EVER!

And alas, my kids never had those coming of age celebrations (at least none thus far, other than graduations from high school & college and I think, maybe, I hope, they wrote some Thank You Notes!?!) so they haven’t really been exposed to the absolute joy of writing hundreds of thank you notes to tons of people who gave them gifts (poor babies).

But gifts aren’t the only reason to write a Thank You Note (I’ve been told).

There are those really thoughtful people out there who exceed all Thank You Note expectations and write them as a lovely follow up to:

1) A job interview.

2) A lunch with a friend.

3) A dinner out with friends.

4) A nice conversation on the phone.

I hate those people.  They give the rest of us a bad name.  They make us look lazy.  They make us look like we were raised in a barn.

So for the record…in case you haven’t figured it out yet…I HATE writing Thank You Notes!

I hate trying to find a card cute enough to write on.  So I buy those stupid little pre-printed thank you cards in packages of 10 at the supermarket with blank innards that are anything but cute.

I hate trying to find the matching envelope that has been buried somewhere in the back of my desk drawer because invariably the cards have gotten separated from the envelopes in the package.

I hate my handwriting (or more accurately, my printing), so I’m actually embarrassed to have someone see how immature and ugly my penmanship is.  I know that anyone who sees it must think to themselves, “How has that woman gotten through life with that horrible handwriting!?!”

In fact, I hate the idea of writing Thank You Notes so much that I’ve totally talked myself into believing that a well crafted, hugely sentimental and well thought-out email more than qualifies as a perfectly valid form of saying “thank you” in lieu of the more formal handwritten Thank You Note.

Case in point (I swear!), as I was in the middle of writing this blog post, the doorbell rang and the postman dropped off a totally unexpected package from my boyfriends’ sister.  She sent me a present for no reason at all (literally…that’s what it said on the card).  OMG…how thoughtful was that!?!  Totally Thank You Note worthy.

And yet, I instantly thought to write an email to her expressing my joy at receiving and opening that unexpected package.  Not for an instant did I think to sit down and write her a note….not even when I’ve got “Thank You Notes” solidly on the brain!

Lazy?  Raised in a Barn?  How about…just damn efficient!

I try to think back and imagine the girl that I was way back then, but I can’t really recall too much of anything (OY!).  I know that would normally be a sign of someone suppressing a traumatic time in their life, but I had a great childhood, and from what I can remember…a fine time in High School.  For me this is nothing new …my memory just sucks.  I can hardly remember the details of the births of my children let alone the thousands of hours I walked the halls in my high school or the names of the kids I’ve known since the 3^rd grade.

So, who was I in High School?

Was I popular?  No.  But I was cute…in an unremarkable kind of way.   I was nice and fun to be with, but not popular.  More like “middle of the road” on a scale of having no friends…………….to being popular.  And, for the first year or so, I wasn’t loyal to (or was it that I really wasn’t a part of?) any one group in particular, but sort of glided around the edges of many.

And then I met…“the boys in the band.”

They called themselves “Oakfield” which combined the names of the two towns the boys lived in.  And they made me feel like I was finally a part of a group.  And I liked the bass player.  And he liked me.

And he had amazing long hair that flowed down to his shoulders and hung in his eyes when he closed them to play the bass guitar, and in High School…that whole musician with the long hair thing was a pretty big deal.

So, for a long time in High School…I was unremarkably cute, with a boyfriend who had amazing long hair, who played in a band.  And, because I was hanging out with boys in a band who DIDN’T EVEN GO TO MY HIGH SCHOOL…it also made me kinda cool.

But I wasn’t popular.   I didn’t do sports.  I didn’t have particularly good or bad grades.  And I didn’t consider myself to be a “joiner.”

In my Senior year however, I decided to join the  “backpacking club,” which was made up of a small group of kids who were into hiking and camping.  As a Jewish kid from the suburbs who had never hiked before (later I found out it was just walking on dirt), or gone camping (I did go to “camp” for 5 years…but it was a high-end Jewish camp where they unpacked your clothes for you before you arrived…so it wouldn’t really qualify as a “camping experience”) it was really a kind of mysterious and almost rebellious thing for me to join.

So imagine my surprise when they nominated me to be their Homecoming Queen candidate.  I hadn’t even gone on any hikes or camping yet!  But I was flattered…and a little confused.  I didn’t really fit the typical mold for a Homecoming Queen.  But as the two boys who organized the club explained to me…that was the point.  They didn’t want a “typical” girl to be nominated for the Homecoming Queen from the backpacking club…they wanted a typical “backpacking girl.”  Aha…that explained it.  I, apparently, had backpacking girl written all over me!

Which I thought was pretty cool.

Unfortunately, my elation at being labeled as a backpacking girl was almost immediately shot down when I was called into the principals’ office after he heard that our “float” for the homecoming parade was a little red wagon…complete with towering cardboard buildings with colored smoke pouring out of their tops depicting the rampant pollution being poured into our atmosphere by Corporate America (which I do credit as the start of my early political career).   He was not happy.  He firmly believed we were trying to make a mockery out of the Homecoming Event and threatened to pull our Club from the whole thing.

OMG…I had NEVER been in trouble in High School before.  I was a pretty good kid.  Some would probably say too good a kid.  I always respected authority and followed the rules, and if I didn’t, I didn’t get caught…except for the time I got caught smoking within 1 foot of the “no smoking” zone and they called my mom, but that time it was really about getting in trouble with my parents, not in school.

I talked my way out of the situation by claiming that we were not in any way making fun of the sanctity and tradition of Homecoming…but rather, we were expressing our views about our love and respect for our environment, which was pretty cool back in 1974!  And he bought it.

So following the big Homecoming football game, we were allowed to roll out our little red wagon with it’s colored smoke pouring out of the top…while I followed behind sitting atop an old Mustang (we tried for a cool jeep, but nobody owned one in suburban Michigan at the time) dressed in matching denim over-alls, flannel shirts, and yes…backpacks, with my date (the boy from the band) feeling and looking pretty damn cool.

I didn’t win as Homecoming Queen.  BUT NOW I was an unremarkably cute member of the Homecoming Queen’s Court… with a boyfriend who had amazing long hair, who played in a band.

Other than that…I didn’t have anything else I was known for, or for that matter, any identifiable talents at all.  I didn’t excel at anything.  But I didn’t fail at anything either.

So I guess at the end of the day, I was…pretty average.

I was an average student, with average looks, an average number of friends, who did an average amount of “stuff”…in High School.

I never realized that writing routinely would be such a challenge.  I’ve  always enjoyed writing in the past, whether for work or for fun.  Maybe, it’s because I knew what I was writing about, so it came easily.  But writing articles for a blog on topics provided by others, has proven to be quite a challenge!

What on earth were Ally and I thinking when we decided to start this type of weekly blog together???

It takes every bit of self-discipline and more often than not, self-bribery, for me to sit down and write each week.  Luckily, I respond well to my own bribery.  Today I told myself that  once I finish this post I’ll get that bracelet I saw the other day.  The next post…a new pair of shoes.  Maybe next week I’ll let myself have a piece of chocolate cake!  It doesn’t take much.  I’ll write for just about any kind of “stuff.”  Jewelry, clothes, food…whatever.

I’m thinking maybe that makes me…a writing whore.

Or…an enterprising woman.  Your call.

Writing on this blog however…is wonderful, because I get to do it with Ally.  I LOVE IT.

I love being able to talk with her about  the various topics we get from friends (YOU!) to write on.  I love going off on my own to write, and then getting her reaction (which I hope beyond hope will be one of approval – OY!).  And, I love being able to plan our next steps together for this venture.  It is the most fun I’ve ever had writing in my life.

But it’s still challenging.

Now…I just have to figure out how to get Ally to give me some stuff for writing this blog!