Love Notes – Full Circle
Sometimes called a billet-doux, or a love letter, a love note is a personal letter to a loved one expressing affection. The loved one does not necessarily have to be animate, human, alive, or known.
The theme for this week’s Prompt for the Promptless, hosted as ever by the talented Queen Creative, is love letters!
I thought we’d take a look at love letters through the ages. Let’s start with a love letter recently discovered carved into a stone tablet, which was buried in the middle of a desert somewhere probably.
Ug,
Me kill mammoth. Me get meat. Me big. Me strong. Me want you. Me make you happy.
Me pick you up at eight.
Ug
As you can see, the cavemen didn’t waste words – in fact they didn’t have many words to waste! There is a directness to this letter which I find refreshing.
Next up, let’s zoom all the way forward to medieval England. A period of chivalrous knights and beautiful damsels, you say? Not a bit of it! Take a look at this recently discovered example.
My Lady Emily,
You hath spurned me for the attentions of Sir Bravealot and humiliated me in front of ye entire court. Therefore I hath struck down Sir Bravealot with mine sword. I hath also seen ye glancing in ye direction of Sir Slashalot. Thusly hath I sliced him open also.
Thus hath you but one suitor remaining in life – me.
I shalt pick ye up at eight.
Sir Killalot
Wow – serious stuff. I imagine that “Lady Emily” feels pretty special as Sir Killalot slaughters his way into her heart.
Let’s zip forward to the roaring Twenties next. Now we really get to hear some flowery stuff, as evidenced by this next example.
Your alabaster skin, soft and pure as the most perfect of rose petals. Your eyes, sparkling as the stars in the night sky. The smile that comes so easily to your lips, lighting the room like the brightest of suns. Your laugh, the tinkling of the most perfectly crafted of wind chimes.
Crispin Bonneville, Esq
Surely we have reached the very pinnacle of love letters! Let’s try the Fifties next.
Dear Emmy-Sue,
Gosh, I enjoyed our lunch date today! You’re so smart and so pretty, Emmy-Sue! Top in your class, a cheerleader and one of the most popular girls in the school! Gosh, Emmy-Sue, I can’t wait to take you to the sock hop tonight! And please assure your Ma and Pa I’ll have you home safe and sound by ten!
Gosh, I’ll pick you up at eight!
Chad
Although not as flowery as our Twenties example, I love the sweet innocence of this letter. Any girl would surely feel special to receive this! Finally, we’ll take a look at a typical love letter of our time. Well, love text.
And there you have it. I’m not even sure it’s written in English. I mean, what the hell? Such a shame.
We have seen that love letters have pretty much gone full circle. We began, and ended, with the caveman.
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draliman on life 
On Facebook, that last latter would look something like – YM – ICU-8?SY? And they understand each other. Remarkable. They have reinvented cryptography.
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It is a bit like code, isn’t it? Designed so that Mum and Dad can’t work out what their kids are up to!
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hahahahahahahahahaha omg!!! I died laughing! round about the shakespeare style love letter I realized where you were going with this! Most clever thing I’ve read in ages! hahaha!!
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I’m glad you enjoyed it! When I saw the prompt I was a bit stuck, but then this idea occurred to me and I ran with it.
Thanks 🙂
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I also enjoyed your love notes. Interesting how your mind works.
Thinking I never would have answered the door at 8:00 though.
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Glad you enjoyed them!
I think 8:00 a perfectly reasonable time to pick up your date! (That’s 20:00, not 08:00!) Or is that a bit too early? 🙂
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No the time is fine however you told me, you did not ask me. At 17 years old telling me would had been impressive now I would not be interested.
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Ah, I see! I don’t think Sir Killalot really cares what the lady thinks, and Crispin sounds like he’s a bit self obsessed to me and it probably didn’t even occur to him to ask 🙂
Personally I also wouldn’t be particularly impressed with being told the time with the assumption it would be fine.
As far as the post went, I wanted to end each note with the same abrupt sentence (for “comedy effect”).
I’m glad to hear you’re not the type to be pushed around 🙂
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Totally made me smile (and then Google ate my commet) My vote goes to Crispin… though also think Sir Killalot has a dead funny sense of humour… hmmmm tough..
I asked one my of students if his teachers already started with abbreviations. He said (quite proudly): ‘Not necessary, I know them all. OMG, LOL (…)’ I couldn’t stop laughing.. he’s such a precious kid…
Just crossing fingers they won’t switch to binary or something after this.
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Crispin certainly knows how to woo the ladies! At least with Sir Killalot however you know what you’re getting – no hidden depths there I think.
I expect if you showed your students my attempt at text-speak they’d be able to correct the “spelling”. Like it’s actually a language or something.
🙂
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Fabulous letters, really made me laugh, had to read them to my husband too lol 🙂
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I’m glad you enjoyed them!
I’m particularly chuffed that you liked it enough to read it to your husband 🙂
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