This is the second of a guest post by Buffalo Girl.  Don't worry, I'll be back soon enough to share wedding horror stories with you.  This story of the nursing home box came from an email she sent to me recently.  The box has been a source of jokes ('put it in the box' and the every popular 'is it box worthy') for many years now.  And yes, our hubbies, when we get together, are terrified, it's kind of like Ghost Busters "Don't Cross the Streams"  - put us in the same room and you're just never sure the shit we'll cook up.  You can thank your lucky stars we don't live closer because we would so totally have taken over the world by now.  Nursing Home Box II......

The letters from DS.. they are just too good. [Amy:none of us understood why she was with him - i purposely changed his initials to DS - short for dip shit].  I just love looking back on them, all those notes from HS all folded into those corny shapes, professing his undying love... compared to my world-weary, raunchy personality now, they seem positively sweet, like something out of the Victorian era.  He was so clever and creative, and wrote me original poems... like I said, very sweet.  The letters dwindled while I was overseas, and then I have nothing from him after that.  I remember there was a time when I was refusing his letters, writing "return to sender" on them and putting them back in the mail. Kind of a cold and heartless thing to do, now that I look back on it! (And of course, I don't have those letters which is a bummer.) Actually, when I really look back on it honestly, I treated most of the men in my life back then like complete garbage.  I can see it in the words they wrote to me, I can feel their emotions coming forth on the paper. 

While e-mail is great and I would never want to be without it, when compared to a letter, it's somehow void of feeling.  I don't know why that is... it's the same words, just in a different format.  I guess it's the impersonal feeling of typing vs. writing, of feeling the carefully folded paper beneath your hands, knowing the writer held that same paper in his hands, methodically and carefully putting his thoughts down to share with me.   He then tucked it into an envelope, found a stamp, copied my address down, put it in the mailbox, and thought about me for days afterwards, wondering when I would get it and what I would think when I read it.  Then he would wait for a reply to come, usually weeks later.  Like I said, a truly lost art!

I will never part with any of those letters as long as I live, and if my house burned down tomorrow, they are the first thing I would run for.
They are a record of some of the most formative years of my life, a window through which I can see myself becoming the person I am today,
and they are completely irreplaceable.

Of course, the second thing I would go for would be my computer, which has all of the archives of my current life on it in this impersonal,
electronic format.  Imperfect as it is, it is still recording my evolution, albeit in a different, but no less important manner.

[Amy:  Barf!  I am so not sentimental compared to her, but i am jealous that she saved all this crap.  I tried once and then after needing to move, tossed it all.  Plus, I find it is much easier to shape my memories into how I wanted them to be rather than what really happened.  For instance, I remember being super cool in highschool, Bufallo Girl has letters of me waxing poetic about band - which memory would you chose?]