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Has “Enter” replaced “RSVP?"
By Cheramy Rusbuldt, Viewpoint
It’s been coming for awhile. Email is replacing hand-written notes, invitations, thank-you’s and person-to-person communication. Now, I may be an old fuddy-duddy, but I am horrified at the impersonal, electronic, sterile (and often pirated) contact we now have with our fellow human beings.
The United States Postal Service has crossed the Rubicon. Mail delivery (including tons of junk mail) is dramatically down, and our all-knowing (but hemorrhaging) quasi-government agency is now squealing about how billions are being lost by having Saturday deliveries.
What’s next? Postal workers sitting out a Monday delivery? A cessation of the Tuesday barrage of grocery and other retail circulars? Private citizens having to anticipate a much-longer-than usual delivery of invitations, bill payments, and so on? How about those of us who have already experienced the nightmare of paying on-line, when we were assessed late fees because the financial institutions failed to post payments when we sent them by pressing “Send”?
I am reminded of my first few months in McKinney (about 10 years ago), when I was invited by a neighbor to an afternoon tea. I thanked my hostess in writing with a real stamp. She, although British by heritage, actually came to my front door to express amazement that I had used “the Post” to send my appreciation. Though that struck me as strange, I was not at that time so roped into the computer, email, and so on.
That shock was to escalate as I found my way into business here. People sitting several feet away from each other in the offices I worked in were sending emails instead of walking down a hall or calling on the phone! I was (and still am) shocked at the cold, sterile and stand-offishness of communicating with real people I usually saw at lunch, in meetings and, occasionally, at after-hours experiences.
I do appreciate the convenience of “conversing” via electronics with friends, associates and others who live many, many miles away. But when did we as a society get so removed from human contact that every connection has been reduced to typing on a screen?
When I went to college a million years ago, I chose a vocation in journalism, and because that was a “written word,” I had to teach myself to type. (My academic schedule in high school did not allow me a class in typing, so I borrowed a typing textbook in the summer after my senior year and spend two months in my bedroom closet with the typing schematic nailed to wall where I learned to be relatively competent, though not a whiz)!
So, is the bottom line that personal, hand-written correspondence, bill paying by paper checks and postage stamps, mail delivery more than a couple days a week are bye-bye in this day and age? What about the union contracts USPS has with its workers? Do they take the same hit the rest of us do? Or will postage stamps for those of us too committed to letters, checks and hand-written notes become so expensive we will be forced to clackey-clackey and hit “Enter” to reach our fellow humans?
I hope not. I have a big box of beautiful note cards and stationery I would have to put in a landfill.
Cheramy Rusbuldt is a freelance journalist who resides in McKinney’s Historic District.
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