Did any of you have pen pals growing up, before the internet became a popular way to communicate? Did you meet your pen pal and did he or she turn out how you expected or not? Share you stories!

I had a pen pal. Well she was my friend first, in 5th grade. We moved back to the US during Dessert Storm and she stayed and we would write. So thats not really a pen pal is it??? Is a pen pal someone you've never met?

Then I've had a dude I knew for like a month get thrown in the slammer and he would write me CONSTANTLY. I wrote back the first time cuz I felt bad for him. Then he started sending me crazy love poems so I never wrote back and it took him like, a really long time to stop writing me.

Oh! Then the one time, at church camp...well I met this cute boy and we wrote back and forth a cpl times. I still remember his name......Toby Cruz from New York.

I had one from Queesnland Australia! The town started with a B I think?? Id have to get my memory book out! She sent me cool brochures and a platypus magnet! We never met though...

luv4u said:

I used to have up to 18 pen pals. From countries such as Ghana, South Korea, Germany, Philippines, USA, and a school teacher from Japan. I still keep in touch with one who named her daughter after me

Awwwww

I used to have one that was 25 when I was 16, my parents did NOT approve

but she was OK, we just couldn't figure out why she wanted to write to a KID.

Then I had one my own age that was cool in the dorkiest way, just like me. We sent each other pictures of our favourite bands - she loved a band from where I lived and I loved one from where she lived, it was perfect!

I never met either of those.

During college I was still writing to a girl that was the grand-daughter of my grandma's BFF (the old ladies set us up). Her letters were great and she came over to meet me but she was AWFUL she made enemies with my room mates within seconds and she was such a drag. I took her to my parents house and they didn't like her either longest 2 weeks of my life.

I used to have two pals who were in the pen.
They told me that during their incarceration,

they were "writing" each other all the time.


Whatever that means.

I had pen pals in Germany because I was learning German in high school. I am still in touch with them. We're still in touch via e-mail (one won't joint FB because she's suspicious of it - "typical" German) and usually still send a birthday card or christmas card by post.

I met both when I went to study in Germany at university - one was studying at a Europa Sekretarin school in Goettingen while I was studying at the University of Goettingen, so we're pretty good friends. She's visited me in Hungary and Switzerland and Los Angeles. She's very nice and I'd say "typical" German. She dated my brother once for about a year (he also studied at the same university).

The other pen pal could be considered typical, I guess, but in that "alternative" style. She has a lot of tattoos and some piercings - last time I saw her in Cologne she had a shaved head too. This was sometime after she told me she thinks she's lesbian. That last time was memorable because she had a friend, a guy, w/ whom I had instant, and I mean INSTANT, sexual chemistry. We were flirting all night at the bar that first time we met, then when I went back w/ my pen pal to sleep at her place, I could NOT sleep at ALL because I felt like my whole body was on fire, especially down there, oh man, I wanted him soooSOOO BAD, even my nipples were tingly, I felt feverish! I never had that feeling before or since. Anyway, he showed up early at my pen pal's place in the morning for breakfast, we walked around Cologne, listened to a guy playing glasses filled w/ water, and oh man, I just wanted to jump this guy's bones right there next to the river (the pen pal's friend, not the glass player). My pen pal knew the electricity going on between us, and at some point before lunch, out of the blue she was like, "alrighty then, I'm gonna go and I'll see you two tomorrow!" So I went to his place (which was a 5 minute walk from my pen pal's place) and

Anyway...MAN, I gotta go take a cold shower... strong memories, strong memories...

That's my pen pal story.

artist76 said:

I had pen pals in Germany because I was learning German in high school. I am still in touch with them. We're still in touch via e-mail (one won't joint FB because she's suspicious of it - "typical" German)...

...The other pen pal could be considered typical, I guess, but in that "alternative" style. She has a lot of tattoos and some piercings - last time I saw her in Cologne she had a shaved head too. This was sometime after she told me she thinks she's lesbian. That last time was memorable because she had a friend, a guy, w/ whom I had instant, and I mean INSTANT, sexual chemistry. We were flirting all night at the bar that first time we met, then when I went back w/ my pen pal to sleep at her place, I could NOT sleep at ALL because I felt like my whole body was on fire, especially down there, oh man, I wanted him soooSOOO BAD, even my nipples were tingly, I felt feverish! I never had that feeling before or since. Anyway, he showed up early at my pen pal's place in the morning for breakfast, we walked around Cologne, listened to a guy playing glasses filled w/ water, and oh man, I just wanted to jump this guy's bones right there next to the river (the pen pal's friend, not the glass player). My pen pal knew the electricity going on between us, and at some point before lunch, out of the blue she was like, "alrighty then, I'm gonna go and I'll see you two tomorrow!" So I went to his place (which was a 5 minute walk from my pen pal's place) and

Anyway...MAN, I gotta go take a cold shower... strong memories, strong memories...

That's my pen pal story.

I was just about to call you out on the bullshit "typical" German(s) you're trying to label here , but after reading the rest of your post, I thought, "why bother?"

A USA pen pal whom I was writing to back in the day ..... she wrote saying her brother asked her if he could write me a letter. She told him ok. Then I start getting letters from him so I figured cool, another pen pal. Well I was dating at the time and this brother of hers in his letters was saying how he saw my pics that I had sent his sister and he liked what he saw. One letter went on about how he and his trucker dad would stop for the night and he would be thinking about me .......... hmmmm prolly ........... I was like oh shit, he likes me... so I wrote back and went on about me and my boyfriend stuff blah blah and either he read what I wrote or he simply ignored it. One day I got a letter saying he was coming to visit me......... I was like oh shit . On the day I got that letter was the day he arrived We got together but I had to let him know I was not interested in him. He went home driving all the way back to Minnesota and sometime later I got this ring in the mail that he had bought at a jewellers, and no it was not an engagement ring. It was a little ruby and mini diamond thing. To make a long story short, my pen pal and I quit writing to each other, whether she was pissed off in regards to her brother I'll never know.

luv4u said:

I used to have up to 18 pen pals. From countries such as Ghana, South Korea, Germany, Philippines, USA, and a school teacher from Japan. I still keep in touch with one who named her daughter after me

these days someone would think a child called "luv4u" would have parents addicted to texting

if i had a child i would call it starbucks to see if i could get free sponsorship or at least some free coffee. hopefully the kid wouldn't get beaten up by school by kids who thought they were named after battle star galactica, but those are the breaks for having a cool name

unique said:

luv4u said:

I used to have up to 18 pen pals. From countries such as Ghana, South Korea, Germany, Philippines, USA, and a school teacher from Japan. I still keep in touch with one who named her daughter after me

these days someone would think a child called "luv4u" would have parents addicted to texting

if i had a child i would call it starbucks to see if i could get free sponsorship or at least some free coffee. hopefully the kid wouldn't get beaten up by school by kids who thought they were named after battle star galactica, but those are the breaks for having a cool name

yep, i had many pen pals as a teen. i only keep in-touch with one now, but she is a very dear friend of mine, her name is courtney, and she's been my friend since 1992 now.

PurpleJedi said:

As a teen I bought one of those Prince fan magazines that they'd sell @ Tower Records (Uptown perhaps?) and I wrote to 2 or 3 people who'd listed their names in there wanting pen pals. One person wrote back and for a while we wrote back & forth - mostly about Prince. She even made me a mixtape. Then I sent her a pic of myself & she stopped writing. Maria Morel Puigmarti...if you're out there...

I am still in touch with one of my friends from that Prince fanzine Controversy we have been in touch since my oldest was a baby and she's 24 now.

I had a friend named James from Kentucky that I used to write too and who use to send me tapes. I miss him and I asked about him when I first got on the Org. He's not on facebook either.

I had a few other friends from the UK and Sweden a couple from the penn in texas and one that lived in the same town as me and who I went to the concert with in 93, we met members of the NPG and Micheal Bland remembered him when I mentioned the meeting to him one time in the chat room here.

I still have all the letters, this is making me want to go and look at them again.

I had a penpal when I was 12. Her name was Jenny, she was 15 and lived in Carlisle.

I got her first couple of letters and thought it was great to actually be receiving my own mail and then I just lost interest. We didn't really have anything in common anyway.

In high school we did a “Letters for the Holidays” thing with people serving in the armed forces.

We were provided with profiles of people serving, giving us basic information about them, and had

to choose anywhere from 1-3 people to write to. I picked myself 3 single attractive men

and proceeded to write them “suggestive letters.” After all 3 took the bait I wrote them the

nastiest letters I could. Finally, one of the teachers began to wonder why I was getting so much

mail and opened one of my letters. Let’s just say that was the end of my pen pal career.

I mean…I figured that instead of thanking them with some… “you’re so brave” crap I’d give

them something that would really light their fires at night. I even provided neck down photos.

Apparently I wasn’t being patriotic enough

LadyCasanova said:

In high school we did a “Letters for the Holidays” thing with people serving in the armed forces.

We were provided with profiles of people serving, giving us basic information about them, and had

to choose anywhere from 1-3 people to write to. I picked myself 3 single attractive men

and proceeded to write them “suggestive letters.” After all 3 took the bait I wrote them the

nastiest letters I could. Finally, one of the teachers began to wonder why I was getting so much

mail and opened one of my letters. Let’s just say that was the end of my pen pal career.

I mean…I figured that instead of thanking them with some… “you’re so brave” crap I’d give

them something that would really light their fires at night. I even provided neck down photos.

Apparently I wasn’t being patriotic enough

I'mma hafta see one of 'dem letters to determine for myself whether or not you were being patriotic enough.

PurpleJedi said:

LadyCasanova said:

In high school we did a “Letters for the Holidays” thing with people serving in the armed forces.

We were provided with profiles of people serving, giving us basic information about them, and had

to choose anywhere from 1-3 people to write to. I picked myself 3 single attractive men

and proceeded to write them “suggestive letters.” After all 3 took the bait I wrote them the

nastiest letters I could. Finally, one of the teachers began to wonder why I was getting so much

mail and opened one of my letters. Let’s just say that was the end of my pen pal career.

I mean…I figured that instead of thanking them with some… “you’re so brave” crap I’d give

them something that would really light their fires at night. I even provided neck down photos.

Apparently I wasn’t being patriotic enough

I'mma hafta see one of 'dem letters to determine for myself whether or not you were being patriotic enough.

, write me and you might get a letter of your own.

[Edited 1/16/12 22:26pm]

PurpleJedi said:

As a teen I bought one of those Prince fan magazines that they'd sell @ Tower Records (Uptown perhaps?) and I wrote to 2 or 3 people who'd listed their names in there wanting pen pals. One person wrote back and for a while we wrote back & forth - mostly about Prince. She even made me a mixtape. Then I sent her a pic of myself & she stopped writing. Maria Morel Puigmarti...if you're out there...

The Prince Family had a pen-pal section.

LadyCasanova said:

PurpleJedi said:

I'mma hafta see one of 'dem letters to determine for myself whether or not you were being patriotic enough.

, write me and you might get a letter of your own.

In 1990, I was working at a copy shop in Edmonton, and a German guy came in with a great Prince article to have copied, and I asked him if he'd mind me making a copy for myself, as well. We got to talking about Prince, and he was really nice (I recall his fave album was Sign o' the Times, although that's not exactly rare).

He was headed back to Germany, but I gave him my address, so that we could keep in touch. I eventually got a big long letter from him, but out of pure laziness, I never answered it.

He's probably an Orger! You out there, bro? Skinny German guy with glasses? This is skinny Canadian guy with no glasses. Sorry about the lack of a response!

I remember when I was around ten years old or so I was really into Commodore 64 computer games, so I put in a small pen pal ad in a C64 magazine (with the intention to discuss and exchange pirated games, which was very common back then). I ended up getting around 70 or so letters, all óf them with floppy discs jam-packed with games. I was so overwhelmed that I barely could bring myself to respond to a single one. All those poor guys probably thought it was all a big con to get their games for free.

I never advertised for pen pals again, lol.