Pen pals, key pals and charity pals

My name is Deirdre, rhymes with Beer-dree, in case you want to get in touch

I prefer getting mail and news delivered to the wooden box attached to our home, the one decorated by Renée, which makes a solid thud when I rescue the paper from it six mornings a week at 5:30.

I consider that experience far superior over having mail and news delivered to my inbox any day of the week with the annoying ping, fronting itself as a delightful bell.

Much to my chagrin, email arrives every day of the week at any and all hours, minutes and precise seconds of the day while mail arrives in the wooden box only once a day at no particular time, on all the days that don’t start with “S,” if at all — and sometimes only if you count flyers from faith communities and fast food floggers.

Despite my preferences, it looks like I picked a poor time to become a pen pal in an effort to increase the volume of mail that lands in the wooden box and “to use correspondence to make and keep a friend,” as the Merriam-Webster definition of pen pal states.

This fall, I reconnected with my first cousin, Colleen Blair Pike, who is my age and was raised 20 minutes away from me.

For some reason, we never really knew each other. Mostly, it seems to me, our dead fathers were brothers who didn’t seem to care for one another much, so our families didn’t intermingle.

I could be wrong, and I may discover her perspective during our proposed penned correspondences with one another exchanged between her residence in New York City and mine, unless the postal strike in this country postpones our plans.

If that’s the case, I can easily fill my time by replying to the people who wait, sometimes patiently (I hope) for months, in my ever-lengthening inbox.

However, some of those patient people may be waiting for a long time if they are one of the many who leave the first “r” out of my name when keying my personal email address.

If that’s the case, it will end up in the “close but no cigar” inbox of one Deidre Pike, who also has a Gmail account using her proper name.

Although we’ve never met, Deidre and I are accidental key pals, people who don’t know each other but share stories of their lives through their electronic correspondence.

It is only because Deidre took the time one day to see if she could determine whose inbox the strange but sometimes seemingly important messages should really be clogging up.

My name is Deirdre, rhymes with Beer-dree but it doesn’t matter. I can stand in front of some people and say with all the clarity, enunciation and volume I can muster, “My name is Deirdre.” And they will say with absolute certainty, “It’s great to meet you, Dei-dre.” Then they send me an email to follow up and they spell it like they said it and it ends up in California.

Interestingly, Deidre is a professor in journalism and mass communication at Humboldt (yes, like Saskatchewan) College. We’ve often mused about the error that now connects us.

Most recently, she forwarded me some misdirected email and I asked her if she was safe wherever she was in California. She was safe and so were her friends, though they had lost a house and some barns.

So even with a Canada Post strike, I’ll be able to stay in touch with people I care about.

What I care more about when it comes to the impact of this potential strike are the charities that depend so heavily on the generosity this time of year uncovers and often lands in the way of cheques in their mailboxes.

It is these not-for-profit businesses, striving to provide services for vulnerable people in our communities, that I care about. The potential loss in revenue will impact important programs dependent on these donations.

So whether the strike comes or not, please go online and make a donation safely and securely through the website of your nearby women’s shelter, Out of the Cold program, food bank (go direct through hamiltonfoodshare.org) or another charity of your choice. Be a pal.

Deirdre Pike is a freelance columnist with The Hamilton Spectator. That’s Deirdre, not Deidre, but you don’t need to know that for the email address related to this column which is dpikeatthespec@gmail.com, but get it right for Twitter @deirdrepike or follow us both.