Postcards

Technology has advanced to a point where we can send a message to a friend on the other side of the world and receive her response within two minutes. That’s just how fast instant messaging is. But, though it has its perks I still miss the days when we would send letters and postcards to each other.

A few weeks ago my mom was unpacking an old box and she found a postcard, and then another until there was so many I had to use a piece of string to keep all of them together. When I had finished my homework I pulled them out again and just sat staring at them in awe. There were so many of them.

Removing the string I laid them out all around me and admired the photographs. Without even moving from my bedroom I began travelling the world.

Reading the messages I couldn’t help but gasp at the adventures my grandparents had been on and what they had seen. During the hour it took for me to read every single one I learnt things about many countries that I hadn’t known before. I saw the sights that they had seen so long ago and I smiled at the parts when they wrote about the photograph my aunt had shown them of me walking for the first time. Of course, I couldn’t remember most of the stories they told me when they got back from their various trips but now thanks to the postcards I know what happened to them and what they did.

At the same time as they sent those postcards they had sent detailed emails to my parents but now, more than twelve years later I can’t simply open those emails and read them. It would take hours to locate them and even if they could be found I doubt I would manage to read every single one of them; as unlike postcards they will not explain just the highlights of the trip

So, the next time I go on holiday I’ll buy a postcard because even if I don’t send it to anyone I’ll have proof that I was actually at that place. I’ll write about my adventures on the back of it and then I’ll store it in a box for someone to open years later so my journeys aren’t forgotten.



I’ve heard of people leaving a trail of footsteps but now I’m going to be leaving a trail of postcards.

I Postcards