Hand out SASEs

Make it easy for people to send you a real letter

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today's tip is to hand out sass that is, self
addressed stamped envelopes. If you'd like for people to write
you or someone else about something in particular, making it
very easy is one way to increase the chances that
it happens. So one of my children is headed off

(00:38):
to a traditional wilderness camp where the kids don't have
electronics for the time while they are there. This means
that we will be back to very old fashioned communication methods.
The camp will require the younger campers to write to
their parents, but as part of this they require the
parents to send in self addressed stamped envelopes. All the

(01:01):
kid has to do is write the note and then
off it goes. Those of us of a certain age,
remember when so called sasse were a part of building
a writing career. You sent in a manuscript somewhere, and
if you wanted a response of whether it would be published,
or if you wanted your manuscript returned, you sent an

(01:24):
sase in with it. Now, I am sure that sounds
so ridiculously quaint. Now I mean couldn't you just email it?
Couldn't everyone respond by email? Well, not really. Postal mail
was how it was happening, but looking up an address
and finding a stamp was still unasked. So the point

(01:45):
was that if you wanted a response, you needed to
make it easy for the person to give you a response.
An sasee made that happen. Will Folks don't necessarily use
postal mail all that often anymore, or it is still
fun to get mail, but looking up an address and
finding a stamp can make it all a lot more challenging.

(02:08):
So if you would like to facilitate some sort of
male communication, you can give someone the equivalent of an
sas to make it easier. For instance, if you would
like your college aged kid to write to an older
relative who doesn't really use email all that much, you
can send along a handful of stamped envelopes addressed to

(02:30):
that relative to make it easier. Or maybe you would
like your neighbors to write to your representatives.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
About an issue. In this day and age, physical letters
still have a formality to them that email doesn't always have.
Your neighbors may care a lot about an issue, but
the effort required to address and stamp an envelope may
present just enough of a hurdle that they get distracted.

(02:58):
Hand them an addressed, stamped envelope open you clear that problem.
Or perhaps you and your significant other will be separated
for a while. You might wish that your significant other
wrote you love letters. You can vastly increase the chances
of that happening by giving your other half a stamped
an addressed envelope. Hopefully they are not so dense that

(03:21):
they won't understand why you are doing that. Now. My
particular kid who is going to camp isn't necessarily much
of a writer, and I'm kind of curious what the
cards he's going to send me will say. Perhaps not much,
but I know in the absence of addressed, stamped envelopes
there probably wouldn't be any communication, so I am happy

(03:45):
to send them along. In the meantime, This is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our times. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at

(04:09):
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, Please visit
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your favorite shows.