I think that I shall never see a txt msg as luvly as a letR

Banishing old boxes of junk from our basement, my wife unearthed dozens of letters from her high school and college years.

The light, breezy cursive from a teenage friend confident about her exploits at another college as if she were filling in pages of a diary. The smile-inducing advice from grandmas. The long, heartfelt good wishes from a good friend who sounded then very much the way she does today. The soul-searching, life-lessons letter from her dad, written in the car over the course of several months during his solitary road trips for business. The romantic musings of her first real boyfriend, written from a college dorm room during his first year away from loved ones.

The words, the tones, the signatures, the return addresses, the doodles, even the style and smell of the stationery all serve as portals through which my wife is carried back to the late 1970s and early '80s.

"To some degree, we've lost that," says Lauren Kuhn, 17, a senior at Naperville North High School. "When I was in junior high, I still did the whole note-passing thing, but that's as close as I'd get to writing letters."

As editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Lauren is a writer. But her communication with friends is confined to typing brief text messages on her cell phone.

"It's funny, because we almost never really think about it right now, but all of that is impermanent," Lauren says. "You don't have a record of that."

She and her younger sisters send hundreds of messages a day -- all deleted for tomorrow's fresh batch.

"I don't even think there is a way to save meaningful text messages long term," notes Tara Jewell, Naperville North's English and journalism teacher. "Even if there was, it's much easier to get in a fight with your boyfriend and impulsively delete a sentimental text or e-mail, rather than dig through that box of notes to sift through the love letters from him."

Text messages and even e-mail aren't good for expressing love or angst.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wouldn't sound as romantic if she'd texted, "Hw do I luv thee? Let me count d wAz. I luv thee 2 d depth n breadth n height my soul cn reach wen feelN outa syt."

Even a lovesick teen's chintzy "UR TGTBT. Ill LYF" carries more heft written on paper as "You are too good to be true. I will love you forever."

"If you are going to do something important, like asking someone on a date or breaking up, you do that in person or on the phone," says Forrest Ball, 17, the sports editor for the Naperville North newspaper. "If you do it online or in text, it's rude."

While Forrest and Lauren say they eschew most of the texting shortcuts and spell out words, no one has the phone memory or the thumb strength to text a rambling six-page letter. So much of what my wife found entertaining was her reading between the lines of the mindless day-to-day fluff.

"It's a lot less personal than seeing somebody's handwriting and the little stuff in the margins," Lauren says of the best text messages she gets. "It makes everything much more casual."

Every thought makes its way instantaneously. There is no setting the letter on a night table overnight; no lingering before dropping the letter in the mail slot. Pushing "send" doesn't have the intimacy of folding the letter, licking the envelope and sealing the sentiments inside.

"You couldn't do what your wife did and bring back letters from 30 years ago … but for the convenience it is, it's too much to give up," Forrest says of texting and its immediate gratification.

"Although it would seem that these minute communications via text carry less weight than old-fashioned drawn-out descriptions and language, I wonder if the meaning of such tiny texts might still pack as much punch to the receiver as longer verses -- think of Haikus," e-mails teacher April Brasel, a lover of language who sponsors Naperville North's literary magazine, speech team and poetry club. "Sometimes they mean more to a reader than any long-winded poem by Byron or Shelley. Where are we headed as a society? Who can say? But it'll be a darn entertaining bling-filled ride to watch."

4 shr. U cn put tht n wrtn.