“Just watch Me”

These words above may or may not be familiar to you .  Originally they were said by Pierre Elliott Trudeau,  in relation to the 1970 War Measures Act, in his role as the Prime Minister of Canada.    The note you see below is from March 19, 2013 that chronicles a conversation, albeit brief, on a Porter flight between Michael Kydd and Justin Trudeau.    Just today, April 14, 2013  Justin Trudeau won the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada; just 45 years after his father assumed the same position.

Of course this note was written approximately 1 month before the leadership race was decided.  As noted here in an article by CBC  this note “sparked a Twitter frenzy.”

This is fascinating.   Why a frenzy?  Here are 10 reasons that went through my head:

* email was down
* small plane
* a somewhat famous personality responded to someone
* Trudeau and Kydd didn’t have each other’s Blackberry pin #’s
* seeing the actual handwritten signatures evokes something nostalgic that we are drawn to
* we wish we had been sitting there on the plane too
* provided a sneak peak into the thoughts of others; others that are potentially shaping the Canadian political landscape
* puts out there in public what maybe should have been private?
*infers that there is a political change afoot that might involve some drama
* that fact that pen was put to paper in such a confident, sassy (some might say arrogant), way makes us want to hollar “Oh, yeah!”

When I saw this trending on Twitter I sent a note (or should I say “tweet”) to Michael Kydd commenting that “only a hand written note would elicit this kind of amazing response!  Wouldn’t be the same in email form.”    Michael concurred “I thought the same thing.  That’s the magic of it.”

And there it is people….. handwritten notes hold a magic.    A magic that is difficult to articulate but undeniably powerful.     So, don’t hold back,   put your sharpie (looks like a sharpie to me in the pic) or mechanical pencil to paper and create some magic of your own.   You never know who is watching!