I found something strange in my mailbox today. Among all the flyers (air mail), store coupons, political advertisements, bills, lottery notices, etc. was a white envelope about nine inches by four inches. I couldn’t recall ever seeing anything like it. I checked, and it was addressed to me, but the address had not been printed on a computer printer. Someone had written the address by hand. This was very strange.

I carefully slit open the envelope, and three pieces of white paper fell out. There were words written on the paper, again not printed by a computer printer but apparently also written by hand.

I puzzled to think what this could be. I looked at the papers and found that I could read (but just barely) what had been written. The characters on the page looked similar to what a computer printer would make but were somewhat less uniform, Somebody had apparently gone to a lot of trouble learning how to copy what printer characters look like. Essentially, this person had learned how to do with a pen held in the hand what a computer printer would normally do. I was astounded. Who would go to all that work?

I looked at the last of the three pages and discovered that someone had written a name at the end. It was a name I recognized. I have a friend by that name. We have been friends for a long time, but I could not recall that he had ever done anything as strange as this in all the time I had known him. He now lives in a different town hundreds of miles away.

I decided this warranted further investigation. I carefully read through the three pages. It seemed as if my friend had written down the things he had been doing, talking about his house, his work, and his family—the kinds of things you would tell someone on the phone or in an email or even on Facebook or X or some other platform. He also commented on things I had told him in the past and asked how I and my family were doing. This was very strange. It was like he had found a new and hitherto unknown way of communicating. I was dumbfounded.

I decided to do a little historical research. I was curious about whether such a thing might have been done in the distant past or if my friend had invented something new. What I discovered was amazing. Apparently, in ancient times, this type of thing had been done before. It even had a name. It was called a “letter.” How had I never heard of this before?

Even more strange was the fact that in this “letter,” my friend had suggested that I “write a letter” back to him just as he had done to me. I wasn’t sure this would even be possible.

But I decided to give it a try. It felt strange to be doing something so unusual and unexpected. I’ll do it to humor my friend, but I can’t imagine that this sort of thing will ever catch on or become widespread.