My Flip Phone Anonymous

Recently, I attempted the ultimate in mailed communication; I mailed a potato to a friend at college. Another friend and I covered it in sticky postage stamps, attached an address label, and waited for the surprise to be discovered in the college mailroom. This must have been more exciting than any two-dimensional exchange of a few words on a smartphone. With texting, a message is scrambled together in seconds and sent without a second thought of whether it was worth it or not. Yet writing old-fashioned letters, whether to a friend or a major corporation, took time and planning. People who wrote these letters spent hours, even days rereading what they had written, editing and perfecting each sentence. They then had to fold the letters up, seal the envelopes, and make their way down to a mail box or post office. With this extra process, they gained time to think about whether or not what they were saying was actually what they intended.

As a teen in the twenty-first century who is still carrying a 'slide phone' around with her each day, I can personally attest to the struggle of communicating properly. When people see my 'antique slide phone,' their first reaction is to laugh and ask why I would still have such a device. The...