Email Woes

Nory questions her contacts.

Nory, tired of forwarded messages and terse responses, asked Tom to write her a story. What she got in response was a series of the usual inane and whiny messages. A story, she thought, has characters and a narrative. These puny messages, while original to the writer, could be improved upon if he tried. She could not complain much, however, because hardly anyone but Linda wrote cogent letters.
Linda’s letters were so pleasurable to read that there was an impulse to save them for posterity. Nory did have a small cache of hand written letters from Linda and a few others that she could not discard. The only hand written note she possessed and had ever received from Tom, was a scrap of paper which read: Back in a wink of a quark’s life. When she found it, he had gone out to get provisions for breakfast that they would share, or perhaps it was something else, she could no longer remember; it was that long ago. She thought at the time, that a quark might be some kind of bird. In the years which passed between then and now, she had learned via several sources that the quark lived in space, and was not so much a bird as a particle; of what she had no idea, nor did she wish to find any more information about it. If she asked, she would receive a ream of research on the subject. Sometimes she asked for stuff just because she was too lazy, and he was so good at finding the information she wanted. The note itself remained in the shoe box with the other hand written letters and cards she had deemed worthy of saving.
At least I get multiple notes to amuse me, was Nory’s opinion. She thought Tom might agree, although he rarely concurred with anything she wrote to him, she felt that his disagreement was calculated so that she would write again to counter his remarks, or to defend herself
. She had learned over time, that to argue with anyone at all was probably not worth the time and energy expended, but Tom made her experience her feelings on a more dramatic level than others did, and she was not sure of why that should be. Still, she had started to realize when she was being baited, and replied to him with the same kind of banter he used on her. He did not like it much, and had begun to complain about her replies, calling her “glib”.
Not thinking that glibness was a problem, she stayed her course, and eagerly awaited further correspondence.