The last two weeks have been pretty intense over here at The Beyond Place.
I thought I’d lighten it up a little bit this week with some embarrassing trips down memory lane.
We had a drawer in a cabinet in the living room. The drawer was always jammed full of stationery. Piles of notecards and postcards and mismatched envelopes collected from various trips or bought on sale. And we used them a lot but somehow the piles never diminished.
From a young age I was taught to write thank you cards, Christmas cards, get-well-soon cards, condolence cards. And cards for no reason, just to say hello and what’s new. “Thinking of You” cards.
Even now I buy cards, also on sale. My mom still gives me boxes of cards as holiday gifts. I send them. And I make the kids write and send them too.
While cleaning out their house in Ohio my parents found the last pages of my two best sets of stationery and brought them to New York and gave them to me here in Brooklyn.
One set I remember we bought in 1979 on a family trip to Shaker Village in Berea Kentucky. It was simple brown paper with the Tree of Life at the top. The second set was a type of stationery very popular in the 80s.
The card and its envelope is made of one piece of printed cardstock with two scored folds so that after you write your message you can fold it and put a shiny gold sticker on the back to seal it and then mail it just like that.
I remember being extra excited because we had ordered it from a catalog and had it personalized with my name and address and the set came in the mail in a stiff plastic envelope with a snap on the back. On what becomes the front of the card there’s a small rectangle that says “STAMP.” To show you where to stick the stamp.
Here’s what it looks like.
A few weeks ago I was looking for some stationery to write a card to someone. The only cards I had left were dour or wrong somehow.
There were the Lee Friedlander cards, but only the ones that conveyed a mournful message. There were the Calder cards but they’re the cheap ones that gave off an aggressive feeling. The Smithsonian ones of 18th century American landscape paintings were too serious. The 1980s cute fat bird on pink cherry blossoms seemed perfect.
The problem was that my return address had not been 926 Silvoor Lane Oxford Ohio since 1987. And on seeing that delicate printed text I felt the whole card choice was immature. It had been decades, after all.
But while fishing around in my own disorganized basket, I discovered one of the fat-sparrow-cherry-blossom cards all folded up, its gold sticker still intact.
Dear reader, upon opening the seal and seeing the contents, I confess I blushed to the roots of my hair. So here you go. Think hard-won cursive. Carefully composed. Undated, but based on context, very obviously from 1983.
Dear Matthew,
My name is Jenny Perlin and I am 13 years old. I wanted to tell you that I just saw your new movie “War Games” and I thought it was the finest movie I’ve seen all year.
You must get hundreds of letters just like this but I wanted to know if we could become “correspondents.”
If so, please write to me and tell me about yourself.
Thanks,
Jenny Perlin
Oh yes, that’s Matthew Broderick we’re talking about. And no, I have no idea why I put the word “correspondents” in quotes. Maybe I was confessing my crush according to some Victorian rules I’d read about in 19th century etiquette books (another one of my charming early teenage habits). Whatever the case, I was smitten and in search of correspondence of some kind.
War Games, the ultimate 80s nerd thriller. Nukes, codes, secrecy, government conspiracy, suspense. I lived it all vicariously while staring at the film’s misunderstood but adorable protagonist. I watched the film many times.
All the elements in War Games converged to spread teenage swoons and Cold War terror across the bleak midwestern landscape of Reagan’s America.
***
As you know, forty years ago there was no internet (for the likes of us) and no computer at our house and no way that I knew of to locate Matthew Broderick’s address, so I never sent the letter.
In the years since, I’ve seen him—at a distance—with his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker. Walking around the West Village. At a museum function I found my way into. Through a boutique window. But I’d forgotten about the letter. I wonder if I should send it now.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. The Beyond Place will be on hiatus for two weeks but will return at the end of this month. Meanwhile, wishing you happy start to 2023.
P.P.S. BUNKER is having its Los Angeles premiere on January 26, 2023 at 7:30pm in the film series Rotations at 2220 Arts + Archives. Programmed by Corina Copp.
Here’s the link to the event.
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