Dish Towel Club

Many years ago, before every home had a computer, we kept in touch with faraway friends and relatives through either mail (now called snail mail) or telephone calls. Long distance calls could get expensive, so many of us used mail except in cases of emergency. Getting a letter in the mail felt like winning the lottery! Sometimes, though, you'd get a chain letter, the precursor to the "click like and type amen or something bad will happen in your life" memes on Facebook. Mostly I didn't participate in those and wondered why on Earth a friend had decided to buy into the superstition of not making 10 copies causing some horrible calamity to befall their loved ones. There were also fun ones such as sending recipes or postcards to the first person listed, scratching their name off the letter and adding yours to the bottom. The idea was that you would get many new recipes or postcards from  many different places. I did enjoy those and still have some of the items around my house. I think by far my favorite chain letter was " The Dish Towel Club". It was well worth the trouble of buying a towel, putting it in a manilla envelope and mailing it off. My friend's mother thought it was a cute idea, although I doubt she participated. I received many cute towels and still have one of them in use. Although it is a bit faded & stained it's useful as a dust rag or for wiping up spills. I doubt that now anyone would participate in such a thing, but everyone on social media seems to share recipes and tips and tricks for doing things. I guess we still want to be connected and help each other as well as sharing our knowledge and talents but we do it instantaneously. That's nice, but I miss getting those surprises in the mail box.

This is the towel I still have. Cute, right?

Unique But Alike

We are all unique and we like that we are. At the same time we want to be with people who are like us. I think that's why we have clubs and different organizations. Maybe what we want, underneath it all, is to feel like we belong. We seem to really enjoy spending time with like-minded people. Sometimes we join groups only to realize that we are too different and feel as if we don't fit in. Like say a tulip petal on a daisy. Each daisy petal is unique, yet when viewed as a group look the same. But a tulip petal is a different size and shape and doesn't belong on a daisy any more than I would belong in a group of rocket scientists or rugby players. I think what I'm trying to say is that we like to know that we are not strange yet we want to retain our individuality. To belong is a wonderful thing, to be lost in a crowd isn't. It seems like it's one of the contradictions of being human. Celebrate your uniqueness, it's what makes being you so enjoyable.