Coolest Thing Ever!

For a while now, I've been on Facebook, and it's been fun to reconnect with people I went to school with (and subsequently lost track of), and Andy & I have become quite the thugs playing Mafia Wars, but I don't think I was really impressed with Facebook until today when I received an email from a girl I was pen pals (not the incarcerated kind) with as a child. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is.

In the 1970s & early 1980s, a show called Big Blue Marble had a segment where you could write in and request a pen pal from somewhere in the world. I ended up writing to a girl here in the US, and we exchanged letters for years. I remember how thrilling it was to receive letters in the mail once a week or so (we were quite devoted writers though what 9-year-olds find to discuss is anyone's guess), and writing letters back and forth to a friend whom I never met was a very important part of my childhood.

So the questions that come to mind as an adult are:

1. Were there child predators trying to take advantage of the pen pal system, as happens so much online today?
2. Is there any electronic communication that is really as exciting as receiving an honest-to-goodness letter?
and 3. Are there any on-line programs now that are safe enough for kids to get on-line pen pals?

And on that note--I'm off to write to my pen pal. I think my last letter would have been 25 years ago, so we have some catching up to do.......