The average teenager sends about 2,000 messages a month – and receives another 2,000. And that’s not even counting Tweets, Facebook posts and instant messages.

I’m not a teen, but I do text, Tweet and all that other social media stuff. I sometimes brag to my wife that I was texting before texting was cool, way back in the previous millennia. My friends would say, “Why text when you can simply call?” And I’d reply, “Just wait until 2014 and you’ll understand.”

I don’t have a teen but I do have a 6-year-old who enjoys texting whenever he can get his parents’ phones. I also have a sweet little girl who can’t text yet but is really good – for a 2-year-old, mind you – at just about any alphabet game on the iPhone. I’m sure she’ll be texting soon.

We live in a world of electronic infatuation and instant communication, and it sounds futile – backwards, really – to try any form of communication that doesn’t involve a keyboard or keypad.

Nevertheless, my oldest son and I often write letters.

What’s a “letter,” you say? Well, a long, long, long time ago, people wrote these things called “paragraphs,” using what was called a “pen,” and they’d “mail” their letter in an “envelope.” (Just look it up on Wikipedia.) It took about two days for a friend to receive it.

It eventually was dubbed “snail mail,” and it was wonderful in so many ways that a text just isn’t.

Why would I teach my son to write letters? Here’s three reasons:

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