Saturday, August 22

Return Address: Think About It

Here's another example of the value of a return address, albeit an extreme example.

Earlier this year I was plundering my collection of vintage postcards (from the '80s) and disseminating them, rather than letting them grow older and unappreciated in my possession. I mailed a bunch out to various friends around the nation and the world, and now I have to wonder how many reached their destinations. For it happened that this one was torn apart, only half of it surviving--and how remarkable is it that my return address happened to remain intact?

It's rare that I'll include a return address on a postcard. There's so little space to say anything, unless you're very good at writing tiny (and you have a Slicci), that sometimes it's too much to even trim a return address label down. And I have plenty of return address labels: my car insurance company printed them out as gifts around Christmas each year, as did the Humane Society and other non-profits, I believe. But I was writing a friend and wanted to ensure she had my address, so I wrote it, and then the card was sundered. But because one of the pieces had my address on it, the post office bothered to put it in an envelope (with a completely unapologetic letter, suggesting I had somehow mispackaged a postcard, causing this minor disaster) and send it back to me.

Return addresses: they're good!

2 comments:

Vanessa said...

Hey, that's me! Yay I finally got to see my postcard. :) By the way, re your post about noticing mistakes everywhere, I do that too. Companies don't know how badly they need at least one good writer/editor on staff.

sxoidmal said...

I thought you might enjoy that one! As I wrote it, I wondered if the other half had survived and the post office saw fit to deliver it to you with attendant apologies.