My boy, like much of his generation, is not a letter writer. While talking to The Ruminator about why he hadn’t sent out a couple ‘Thank You‘ notes, he gave me the – ‘I don’t have any cards and I have bad handwriting’ – story.  I made a deal with him:  I would make him some stationary and cards with zombies on them if he both promised to use them for the aforementioned note of ‘thanks’ and if he would write me one letter a month for two years.  I told him that penmanship, content, punctuation, and spelling didn’t matter.  I just wanted one honest letter a month.   He loves “killing” zombies and so he was in!  I made him shake on it.  To drive the point home, I drew up the little contract below for him to sign, putting Christmas and birthday presents on the line for failure to live up to the deal, and made sure Santa witnessed it as well.

Quality stationary means quality paper.  Like with my own and Stamps-With-Foot’s Stationary – instead of the white recycled paper that we use for most printing, I used 30gram 100% cotton ivory/ecru paper and matching 100% cotton envelops.   I went into Adobe Illustrator and made a green zombie head Victorian silhouette from an image that I pulled of the inter-webs.

I worked on it for 3-4 hours and stayed up late putting it all together.  I had a surprise trip to the UAE come up, so I asked Stamps-With-Foot to send The Ruminator his stationary.  I even included an organizer and special pen for him to compose his prose with.  I called his house the day it all arrived and got an butt-chewing from his mother about how crappy it was to make a 10 year old sign a contract and expect him to write me once a month.  She was not amused and missed the whole spirit and reason it was all done in the first place.  I doubt that I will be getting a letter and no notes will be sent out.  My son will learn that he doesn’t have to keep his word and that not all manners are important…  Exactly the opposite lesson that I was trying to teach him.  We shall see how it all turns out…