Day 305

What do you call pen pals in the days of email?  E-pals?  My oldest daughter, has a Nepalese friend that she exchanges communications with via email.  Her E-pal is the daughter of a Sherpa I knew many years ago.

Isn’t the internet amazing?  This is much more exotic than the pen friend I had at her age whom I met at camp.  She lived about 25 miles away, but because her number was LONG DISTANCE, we had to communicate via letter (15 cent stamp).  Because I was a bit lazy and those stamps weren’t easy to come by, our friendship didn’t last very long.

Sometime in November, we sent Kayla’s friend and her brother a package with some art supplies, and a few new “re-gifted” items.  Apparently they got loaded on the slow boat because, SURPRISE, they just arrived there a few days ago. After all that time, I was amazed they arrived at all. I figured they had probably “fallen off the boat” and were now the property of an intermediary postal employee in some random country en route.

Here is the digital conversation that followed.  Other than removing last names and email address that some creepy internet stalker might be interested in, I haven’t altered this conversation in any way.

Dear friend Kayla,

Namaste.

Thank you so much for your lovely gifts.I am so glad to received them.We both are very happy and would like to give you many many thanks.From here,i could not send to you anything except my love and wishes because i have nothing and very expensive to  goods from Nepal.When you are here some days and i really like to give you some little gift.Please tell to your parents and sister to visit Nepal soon.Bye

I really want to meet you my friend.Please pass my regards to parents and sister.

With best regards,

Samikshya

Dear Samikshya,

That is really ok if you can’t send gifts, I don’t need them. I own many good things already.  I might visit Nepal soon, I really hope I do!

Hope to see you and your family. soon!

Your friend, Kayla

Now parenthood does have its ups and downs.  But at the moment I read this, I was flying high.  I was delighted at her outlook and her assertion that she already owned “many good things.” So, I prattled on about my delight to her.

She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Well, MOM, what am I supposed to say?  She’s all, best regards, and other weird words, and I don’t know what else to say.”

“Oh”, I said a bit put off.  “Well, you know that English isn’t her first language and she’s writing as she’s learned it in school.”

She gave me a noncommittal shrug and turned away to load her backpack for school. I had been dismissed.

I didn’t press the issue, I figure the road to becoming a good global citizen is long and hopefully she’s at least taken the first few steps.

The gifts we sent