Discovering the World

     Uncle Ralph was a career military man, and his work took him around the world many times. When I was about ten years old, Uncle Ralph gave me an envelope full of postage stamps from some of the places he had been. It was a wonderful gift, and those brightly colored bits of paper took me to places about which I had only dreamed! Mom bought me a stamp album in which I lovingly placed the snapshots of the world, and a couple of years later, I began to seriously collect stamps on my own. I started to look not only at the world's stamps, but also the stamps issued by my own country, and I eagerly awaited the release of a new one so I could go to the post office and get the "plate block"---the four stamps from the corner of a sheet which contained the number of the run.

     While the US stamps were fun, inexpensive, and easily available, I was still captivated by the stamps of the world. They came in different shapes and sizes, and the art work was incredible in its detail. The words on the stamps were in languages other than English, and I began to learn the difference between a British pound and an Italian lire. I learned to recognize certain words in the Cyrillic language used in the Soviet Union, and could recognize the differences between Japanese, Korean, and Chinese characters. I learned geography, because what was the point of having a stamp in the collection if I did not know where its home country was located? As I sorted and mounted stamps, I traveled and received an education and I suspect I was one of a handful of twelve year old kids in my community who knew the names of ever country in Africa in 1962!

     I still collect stamps. As I have upgraded the collection, I have accumulated a large number of duplicates, and I have been searching for some youngster who would want to begin the journey into the world as I did so long ago. So far I have had no luck...it seems that stamp collecting is going the way of the dinosaur, and that is sad. I think the reason may be twofold---first of all, electronic communication is replacing mailed letters. Instant messaging and email do not need a stamp. Secondly, kids today have the world at their fingertips. One can literally travel around the world with Google Earth and actually see the countryside as it is. The pictures on the stamps brought the world to me; now the world comes into the home at the stroke of a computer key. So while my pile of duplicate stamps wait for a home, I am thankful I was born in a time when I could discover the world through tiny bits of paper!