Memo for the 21st Century
It was like this once: people wrote
heartfelt letters with neat penmanship,
days were spent waiting for a reply,
expressing our feeling for another in a love letter.
Now we send quick text messages or a DM
The heartfelt content turned into quick instant messaging
And the anticipation for a reply completely lost
We forgot how to correctly form a sentence
and spell words without autocorrect. Â
This is how it was
before instant messages.
Children learned how to write in cursive
in order to compose a letter to Grandma
They wrote the letter with a twinkle in their eye
and could not wait to run to the mailbox
now they sit and type out a quick message,
instantly sending and receiving messages.
They spend hours messaging multiple people,
instead of writing a letter or talking in person.
This is how it was
before instant messages.
We sat at the table, asking our parents
how to spell words, as our brains composed a beautiful symphony
filling the paper with the beautiful music
We anxiously waited for Grandma’s reply, and
wondered what the letter was going to say, but now we worry
about how that person read the message but did not reply.
Everything was different before,
people did not get mad
when it took a bit for a response
Before READ AT 12.35pm was a thing
we waited as long as it took for the loving words
that touched our hearts and sometimes brought tears to our eye
Listen: in the world once,
people waited for a response.
