It’s Just Good Science: Thank You Notes Are Good for You

Your mom was right. Thank you’s are good for your emotional and physical health

I say Thank you all the time. I wrote it just now. Took me just a few seconds. The gleeful look I paste on my face when someone gives me a chatchski that the gift giver picked up at a truck stop counter takes a little more effort. But I manage, because how hard is it to smile and bend your eyebrows?

Actually, some of those little things at truck stop counters are kind of cute. I wouldn’t mind receiving a key chain that looks like a deer hoof, or a cigarette lighter that looks like a tiny revolver.

In order to look grateful, surprised, and happy when you receive an Einstein bobble head for your birthday, you must imagine you just won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.

For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a contest sponsored by some people in New York who like to generate a thousand tons of paper waste. If you subscribe to even one magazine, they will hunt you down and try to get you to buy more magazines.

They’ll send you a big envelope full of more envelopes. Those envelopes contain letters detailing the stories of single moms with fifteen children, who entered their contest and WON! Now, even their toddler is living in a mansion and has a HumVee.