Going Postal

I work at home. My family lives 3,000 miles away. I volunteer for a children’s charity. No, this is not the beginning of a pathetic personal ad; this is a short list explaining why I go to the local post office almost every day of the week.

It helps that the post office is about a mile from where I live, and I don’t have a car, so there’s the exercise factor: a quick stroll over and back and I feel a bit less guilty about quitting my Pilates class.

I know from experience that the best time to go to the post office is early in the morning. We’re talking 7:00 a.m., when the go-getters are already at work and the students (I live in a college town) are still fast asleep. Problem is, I’m usually fast asleep then, too. So I go in the afternoon, and almost every trip makes my head spin.

I don’t mind the guy in front of me mailing 30 boxes (every one of them requiring insurance)… he’s obviously making a living on eBay and I respect that – though I would cringe if I knew that my eBay purchase came from someone who looked like he hadn’t showered in two years. I don’t mind the girl who asks to borrow my pen; I guess it never occurred to her to put the addresses on her holiday cards before she got in line at the post office. The crying kids in strollers are actually not that bad – I’d be crying too if my mother dragged me to this place and handed me a bunch of Cheerios to try to keep me quiet.

What I do mind – and people, “mind” is putting it mildly – are the line creepers. These are the folks who think that inching up on the person in front of them will actually make the line move more quickly. The guy who slides his box along the countertop every five seconds; the woman who gets so close to me that I can feel her breath on the back of my neck… the girl on a cell phone who is so clueless that she fails to notice that NO I have not moved forward and yes, she is stepping on the back of my shoes. Sometimes I like to mess with these people: I’ll lean forward as if I were going to take a step ahead in line, then lean back. I’ll let the person ahead of me take a few steps forward, but I’ll stand still (this makes the line creepers go crazy!). Inevitably, an anxious person behind me will ask, “Are you in line?” No, I’m standing here waiting for my packages to teleport themselves to California. “Yes, I’m line. Why do you ask?”

This week I received a cute little card from the U.S. Postal Service. It included a list of “Dates to Remember” to get my holiday packages to their destinations on time. Thanks, I had forgotten that every December 25th for the past 2,000 years is the day the gifts need to be under the tree.

I love mailing gifts to my mom and (most of) my big family. But before next year, to save time in the post office, I might just move home.

Until next time,

Conna