The Dodo Club

(Because I’m fairly new, I have to point this out ‘cus I find it VERY exciting…if you click on the title of this blog, it’ll TAKE YOU THERE!! So cool.)

So. Anyway. On with the show here.
As a child, I was hooked up with this particular club…”The DODO CLUB”. Man, it was great.
We (Jennye and I, of course) would pile our pennies together, and rush down to the post office to have the lady (it was always a ‘lady’ back then. Not a woman or man. “The Postal Lady.” It was a title. You could apply…) but I digress...you asked the Postal Lady to please make a money order out to the tune of 7 pounds, because it was going to England, and they use pounds there, not ‘dollars’ isn’t that weird? I wonder if their money is heavier and that’s why they call them pounds?? Yeah, right.

And then we would have to (get this) MAIL IT(!) to England.
No e-mail credit card stuff then, no sir.
These were the old days, waaaay before this 'internet' thingy-ma-jiggy…and credit cards! HA! I don’t think my parents even had a checking account!
Which might go a long way to explain my current aversion to credit cards, I mean, some anonymous company doling out credit to complete strangers. Hello!?!
And checks!? What good are they, they’re not even real money! Well in MY day…


Anyway. “The Dodo Club” is devoted to the conservation of rare and endangered animals via a ‘zoo’ (though I do hate to call them that, but I can't think of a better word at the moment) on Jersey in the Channel Islands created by Mr. Durrell.
Great club.
They would mail out a monthly newsletter (monthly or was it quarterly?) with all sorts of information and tidbits about the daily destruction of the planet and how the human race was responsible for the demise of thousands of species of animals (well, okay, they didn’t actually say any of that.
But I was 9, I could read between the lines!)

AND they had a ‘pen pal’ section.
So I had a PEN PAL.
She was from Hungary (Debrecen) which I thought was fabulous because I’m half Hungarian on my fathers’ side, although he was born in Canada…and so was I.
BUT I always thought it was so exotic and mysterious…in my mind, I was half a gypsy princess, whisked out of Hungary due to the turmoil of the country, and that when I was old enough I would be returned to my rightful throne to rebuild the country to it’s former glory and power!!!

Well, you never know!
Maybe one day soon the next newspaper headline you see will read, “QUEEN TAI RETURNED TO THRONE!!! THE COUNTRY REJOICES!”

I’m have a hard time keeping on track here…okay, my pen pal’s name was Agota Vinczeffy (it was close to that…c’mon, I was 9).
I wonder what ever happened to her. I was very diligent in writing to her. She wasn’t diligent in responding.

Since then, I’ve gone to Hungary, but I never went to Debrecen. I discovered cheap beer and that the country wasn’t in that much turmoil. How could they be, with beer that cheap!!

I still think I would have made a rockin’ Queen though.
I would have sent lots of money to “The Dodo Club” if I WAS queen, believe me!