Poggy

I was a voracious comic book reader of Archie comics. I was 12 years old, and it was 1969. I showed my mother a section in the comic book where you could write in and add your name to a list inviting pen pals. I remember my mother telling me that she was restricted to bed by her heart condition when she was my age, and her pen pals were her friends. She encouraged me to send in my information. I did, and I ended up getting several other kids who wanted to be pen pals. We wrote back and forth for a little while, and I guess life got in the way, and I forgot all about them, as I assume they forgot about me.

Nine years forward in time to 1978. I was 21 years old and in the Navy. My parents sent me a letter that was sent to my home, from India. It was from a 12-year-old girl named Christine. She had read in a comic book that I wanted to be a pen pal, having no idea that the comic was nine years old. I felt bad for her and wrote back explaining that I was now 21, on a ship in the US Navy, and if she still wanted to be a pen pal, she would have to get her parent’s permission. She got permission from her parents, and we wrote back and forth for years. She sent me a photo of herself and described herself as being “Poggy.’ I asked her what “Poggy” meant, as it is not a term I was familiar with. She said it meant basically what we refer to as overweight. Later on, in our letter exchanges, she asked me if I could send her a Saturday Night Fever album as they were unavailable where she was in India. I sent her the album and never heard back from her. I did not think her purpose of writing was to get that album, as we wrote quite a bit before that. I wondered what happened.

Forward in time to a few years ago. I received a Facebook message from my pen pal Christine. She said she was telling her daughter about me and that we were pen pals. This is foreign to the youth of today since the advent of email, instant messaging, etc. She said her daughter told her that everyone in the United States is on Facebook, so she looked me up. She wanted to let me know that after I sent her the Saturday Night Fever Album, her parents died, and she was placed in an orphanage. She said everything she owned was taken away, including the album and all the letters from me. She was unable to write because she didn’t have my address, but she remembered my name. We still occasionally exchange messages on Facebook.