Never knew it WAS "anime"

[shalanna]

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher Ms. Bolton arranged for our class to have a pen-pal letter exchange with a class of sixth-grade (or the equivalent) girls in Japan. This was supposed to foster understanding between countries to help us hate world wars (which worked well back in those hippie 1970s days--my teacher wore her hair in two pigtails or ratted up in the Brigitte Bardot manner and always wore cool patterned mini A-line shifts and white go-go boots or sandals) and understand other cultures.

We exchanged postcards, cheapie souvenirs from Sun Rexall Drugs, and various recipes along with our letters. Most of the class just fooled with it because they had to for a grade. Most of them were slackers and didn't have any reason to do this, so they just blew it off. But I was captivated.

I continued writing to my "match" after the class had forgotten about it all. My pen-pal was Noriko Kurashiki, called "Noko," and she had a great talent for pen-and-ink drawings. We wrote to one another (using the University of Minnesota's World Pen Pals guidelines--I'm sure that is SO out of date now that you'd laugh) for several YEARS, until she finally wrote to me that she would stop writing and she wished me well. After that I never got another answer. I have often wondered what happened to her. Maybe she got interested in boys (we were by then entering high school); maybe she went into an arranged marriage; perhaps she became a geisha. (They still did stuff like that back then. I hope that didn't happen.) I have always hoped she ended up with her best life (and that our break-off was merely because I was such a boring clod who talked all the time about rock groups, boys, and school activities.)


At any rate, what I was gonna tell you is that she always did little sketches in her letters. They were written in fountain pen (Parker "Startling Blue" ink with a metal nib) on that onionskin "Air Mail" paper that we used to have in the Olden Days. But they were illustrated with sketches that I would now have to call proto-Anime.

I sketched back to her, but my stuff was more silly or weird, and I didn't have that artistic talent for capturing the wistfulness the way she always did. Mine were cartoony, with cartoony subjects.



Still, it was a neat way to correspond. I did mail art for a while a few years back. That's the closest I've come to doing the pen-pal thing again. AND THEN I FOUND FidoNet and CompuServe and GEnie and the Internet!

I had several pen-pals through the U of M organization over my junior high school years. For me, pen-palling was a way to have someone to write to who wouldn't think of me as "that girl whose mother dresses her funny" or have any other preconceived notions. I had people all over the world there for a while. I lost track of them all eventually as they quit writing for one reason or other. I particularly remember (and wish I could find):

Melodie Smith from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Ingeborg Kretzinger from Germany--Wasserburg on the Inn

Inge and I wrote despite the language barrier. She was pretty good at writing in English. She often used those airmail letter things that folded up out of one piece of flimsy paper . . . they were cheaper to send. But she always had interesting things to say. She sent me a tiny Steiff bear that was made out of pipe cleaner stuff (it seemed) from a sample shop, which I put into my dollhouse--it even had an ear tag with the Steiff authentic logo. I sent a charm bracelet from the State Fair of Texas that had goldtone letters spelling "Dallas, Texas," sans comma, and little armadillos, oil rigs, and Texas flags. That cost a lot to send, and my dad grumbled (but we sent it, and I got back a similar charm bracelet with shield-shaped enameled German town flag decorations!)

Melodie and I had no language barrier. I think she just got interested in dating and school activities, and I was turning into the weirdo I am now, so she just kind of trailed off.

I know they have different last names now and have forgotten about me, but anyhow, I hope they have fond memories of their days writing to their Dallas pencil-pal.

Comments

[dennismhavens.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating stuff. When I was learning Esperanto I corresponded with people all over the world. Having Esperanto in common made it so much easier. I kept this up with people in such diverse countries as Finland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Brazil, Germany, France and Egypt. How could I have learned even the most basic elements of all those languages? The fact that all of those people in their farflung locations had learned Esperanto, as had I, made it possible. It's so easy to learn that you can be writing letters (and understanding the replies) within a week.
And even an auxiliary language isn't necessary, for in-person communication. I had a friend, a pianist from Venezuela, who had a daughter the same age as Lonie. His daughter, Anabel, spoke nothing but Spanish and Lonie spoke only English. They were about four at the time. We'd see the girls playing and speaking in what I assumed was Spanish, but my friend Julian assured me wasn't. The two of them had somehow improvised a language of their own, one that had no recognizable English or Spanish in it; yet they communicated beautifully. They'd created their own version of Esperanto, and it was obvious that each understood what the other was saying. I wish I had recorded them: it would have made for interesting analysis.
So I can certainly empathize with your pen-palling. Writing back and forth with your contemporaries in other cultures can bring nothing but good.