Cover Sheets

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A day's worth of mail can vary greatly from day to day. Today mostly questions I can forward to another department to answer, tomorrow questions about the meaning of life and an introduction to some new, bizarre health treatment with disgusting side-effects, described in more detail than necessary.

When you are confronted with such a letter, one that stretches for pages and pages or one that in a matter of two sentences makes you want to sneak it on to your neighbor's desk, there must be some way to make the letter less intimidating. And that thing is cover sheeting.

Cover sheeting is a fancy word that really just means "find the person's name and contact information and main reason for writing". Cover sheeting is imposing your own organization onto someone else's free expression. Now admittedly, that doesn't help much when the person is convinced that your NPO must have it's own private jet, but it accomplishes wonders in many other headaches.

And really, it is kind of amazing to realize that regardless of whether the paper is 8.5 x 11 or 10 x 13 or 2.3 x 3.13 or 24 x 36 and irrespective of whether the letter is written in the King's English, 1337 sp3ak , or some accidental variation of the two... it can all be cover sheeted.

Is it any surprise that I have been tempted to carry this methodology over into other areas of my life? I am given a hand-out at Bible study and I begin to write the person's name and contact information before I realize that it's not a letter. An email appears in my inbox and it feels weird to answer it without cover sheeting it first.

Maybe I will start carrying pen and paper around so that every time I come into contact with anyone or anything I'm not quite sure how to deal with, I can whip out a cover sheet. I might single-handedly insure the ruination of acres and acres of trees, but who knows? Maybe I would manage to solve one of the world's problems.

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