Presumably in response to this comment, a letter from Erica was waiting in my mailbox yesterday evening. It is a charming epistle, with its words covering every square centimeter of space, written in alternating directions on a long sheet of paper, and detailing the causes and effects of ulcerative colitis as caused by the proximal ingestion of broccoli and cheap chocolate ice-cream. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I will tell you that we have plans to reverse engineer a Silano pizza tonight. And thanks to this letter I’ll be sure not to follow dinner with dessert.

It also it put me in mind of a few other memorable missives I’ve received in my score and six years:

There was the (form) letter from the secretary of the Queen of England when I was about 8 or 9, thanking me for my interest in her royal corgis and regretting that she was unable to send pictures, due to the many such requests she receives every month. It had a seal and everything and was quite thrilling, even though it wasn’t written in the Queen’s own hand. I believe my mother still has it, sticking breathlessly to the pages of a huge binder full of assorted childhood flotsam and jetsam.

There have been many, many love letters — Hi, long-distance-relationships. I don’t miss you one bit — but almost as many envelopes in which a broken heart is sealed under the flap. I still have most of those, fraying at the folds and moldering gently away in shoeboxes.

But the most epic correspondence of my life took place early — the year I turned twelve, when my best friend Debbie’s father took a sabbatical and she went away to live in America. I was devastated, but we promised we’d write each other a letter a week the whole time and let me tell you, we were devoted. The mailing frenzy started as soon as she left (her first letter raved about the fact that they showed Cosby Show reruns every day on the television) and I don’t think either of us ever skipped a week that entire year. These were sheets stuffed full with creative energy, too — sketches, comic-strips, song lyrics, literary criticism. Debbie started keeping a running tally of every Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt she saw (I think she got into the hundreds). We sent tapes back and forth and clippings from newspapers and magazines that we thought would amuse. Everything went into a giant cookie tin I opened every week to deposit the new arrival.

When Debbie (whom my father, for reasons known only to himself, insisted on calling “Debris”) returned the next year, everything was different. Primary school was history and we’d been thrust into the dark and exciting world of Secondary school… where the kids graffitied on the desks. We were suddenly teenagers. Boys were maybekindasorta interesting. And I had two new best friends we had to negotiate.

Debbie and I were never the same. But we poured our whole pre-teen hearts into those letters and I will never forget how much it meant to me that we kept our promise every week.