Sometimes we forget how different the world was before the advent of social media. In the 90s and before, If you had a beef with a company, you could call or send a letter, or complain in person.  Long-distance phone calls were charged by the minute and they were expensive.  A letter was much cheaper, but it took time to write and mail and arrive at its destination. To complain in person, you had to travel and you had to have the courage to speak up face-to-face, so I’m guessing most people simply discarded defective products and carried on.  

Not me.  

As Hilary and I discuss in Episode Three To Whom It May Concern, I was undaunted by the time and energy it took to send a letter to a company responsible for a defective product. Decades later, as Hilary reads them to me in the episode, her insights, comments and questions are spot on. My strident words sound both ridiculous and hilarious and often leave me with one recurring thought: WHAT WAS I THINKING?. 

Never mind the wackiness of writing all these letters, you’re probably thinking: Who saves her own letters and responses?  Well, I saved this nutty correspondence (and oodles of other memorabilia) both because I loved to randomly share them with friends and family, and because I always hoped to someday incorporate them into my writing and storytelling.  Little did I know that post retirement, I’d be collaborating with my daughter and sharing these tales on something called a podcast, writing about them in something called a blog, and promoting them on something called Instagram and TikTok.

By the way, my letter writing was not confined to complaints and because I’m a hoarder I can prove it.  Check out this fifty-year-old response to me from Clairol: 

Watch and listen to our full “To Whom It May Concern” episode here: