a halloween story about a mailman named gary

years ago i worked with a mailman named gary.
he had the gift of bluntness coupled with a knack for pissing people off.
he was a rather intimidating guy, well over 300 lbs and absolutely unconcerned with political correctness.
for some unknown reason, gary and i developed quite a rapport.
i was into country music at the time. he detested it and would make up twangy songs about the post office and sing them rather loudly to me.
i loved it.
here is the best story he ever told me.

before getting his job at the P.O., he worked at Wegmans grocery store.
Wegmans has a very RAH-RAH attitude about everything which drove him around the bend.
the night before halloween, at a staff meeting, his manager told all of the employees that they were required to wear costumes to work the next day.
gary, of course told them that there was no way he was going to do that.
he was told that it was mandatory..not optional.

the next morning he called his boss.
"I've got a costume..."
his boss was pleased.
"I'm going to be The Invisible Man!"
he hung up the phone, and of course made himself invisible by not showing up at work that night.
that, my friends, is how you make a sick call.
god bless you gary wherever you are.
and happy halloween!

Here we go again

Just when i had put worries of offending my elderly, conservative customers with my "clever" book behind me.....Mrs. X sticks her head out of the door today
to tell me that she heard about my book from Mrs. B.
Mrs. X is even older than Mrs. B..perhaps even more devout and even blue-bloodier.
Now she says she is going to get a copy of my book too!
This time i actually was able to offer up a bit of a warning..telling her that the book is a bit "spicy".
"That's OK..I like spicy!" she assured me.
we shall see.
one positive thing of note:
she asked me my name several times.
seems her memory is beginning to fail.
maybe she'll just forget about the whole conversation
and i'll dodge a bullet.
or maybe i'm not giving these old timers enough credit.
maybe they do like "spicy".

socks addict

i had a day off.
my uniform's been looking pretty ragged lately.
had a little time to kill and a full compliment of my clothing allotment available..so i
stopped by the uniform store.
needed shirts, pants ,shoes, rubbers..badly.
what did i wind up buying?
no shirts.
no pants.
a pair of shoes that kind of don't fit me. liked the price more than anything else. $46 marked down from $96. (i'll make them fit somehow)..
and seven pairs of kick ass socks.
four different styles. three different colors.
all with extra cushiony heels.
i'll be the first to admit that i do suffer from an acute case of sock lust.
walking out of the store i probably should have felt like it was a failure of a shopping trip, but instead i was ecstatic..clutching my bag full of socks to my chest like an addict that just scored some choice cocaine.
tomorrow will be a better day just because of my brand new socks.
i will probably have to wear 3 pair at a time to get my new shoes ( 7 WIDE) to fit my
7 NARROW feet but love is blind and i am in love.
socks are definitely not overrated.

Yikes

i published a book in the spring.
it's about aging boomers.
it's about how we use to smoke pot and now we just take care of our suburban manicured lawns.
it's about sagging boobs and boob jobs.
it's about botox , SUV's and triple lattes.
it's not warm and fuzzy.
it's crusty and snarky.
there is one illustration that involves full-frontal nudity.
why am i telling you this?
only because my oldest and most catholic, country club blue blooded customers got a phone call from one of their old neighbors.
she told them that she knew i was their mail carrier ..and asked if they had seen the book i had written.
this lady is a friend of my mom's..she's very avante garde and open minded and LOVED the book.
that's cool.. but why would she tell these totally conservative, proper people about it???
so, they met me at the door yesterday telling me that they were on their way out to buy a copy of the book.
how could i tell them.."no..don't do it!"
i froze.
they pulled out of the driveway and waved goodbye!
OH MY GOD! this is not going to have a happy ending.
i told brian about it this morning because he use to deliver this route and he knows these people and has read my book.
"Brian..how do you think they are going to react to the book?"
"You can kiss your Christmas tip goodbye." was his response.
today as i got closer to delivering their house i got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.
please do not be home !
shoot!
there's MR. B backing out of his driveway.
please just keep driving!
shoot!
there is his power window going down.
"We got your book."
shoot.
"It was very (pause--------------------) clever".
he hated it.
"My wife liked it very much!"
nice save!
well at least that's over with...
and we can all move on.

dehydration vs. cancer

the weather up until this week has been freakishly warm around here.
of course with temps into the high 80's it has been of utmost importance to stay properly hydrated.
a while back i was on my way to the drinking fountain to fill up a few of my water bottles before i hit the street. they were water bottles i had bought designer water in a few days before and i was going to reuse them.
"don't do it." said one of my postal buddies.
"don't do what?" i asked.
"don't refill bottles like that..you can get cancer from reusing that kind of bottle."
recently i had a similar discussion with another friend at work. he went online, did some research and found that the whole plastic bottle/cancer thing was a myth.
on the other hand, cheryl crowe insists that it was one of the reasons she developed breast cancer.
what to do?
"just go to the store and buy yourself a real water bottle that is meant to be reused" my buddy told me.
so i went to the store and bought this pretty pink, overpriced bottle but felt good about it because it would help me avoid getting cancer AND proceeds from the sale of it would benefit breast cancer.
Ahhhh...a perfect solution.
problem solved.
so i brought the bottle to work and proudly showed my pal.
" i don't know" he said, "that looks kind of flimsy to me. you need the HARD plastic kind that won't get creases in it..that's what releases the bad toxic junk into your drinking water".
problem not solved.
so now it's 80 degrees and i head out to the street with my brand new empty water bottle to deliver mail in the grinding heat..
dehydration vs. potential cancer.
life is so complicated sometimes.

what a way to go

this is an actual sign that i took down from the wall
by the timeclock
inviting fellow emloyees
to celebrate
carl's
last day
of
work.




one of my pals stated very aptly:
"after 30 years of dedicated service,they give you a round of applause and a swift kick in the ass out the door".
oh, yeah, and a handmade sign hung on the clock referring to you as an a***hole.
"is this sad or funny?" i asked Keith and Tom.
they agreed the answer is :both.

so close yet so far apart

i was just cruising along like any other day.
trucking across the lawn..when BAM!
i stopped in my tracks.
what stopped me was the cover of the magazine i was about to deliver.
the mag was Fortune.
on the cover was a picture of two women.
the text read " The 50 most powerful women in America".
why did that stop me in my tracks?
because one of the woman on the cover, now a president of one of the largest companies in the US, back in another lifetime was just an anonymous gal bellied up to an irish bar across from East High School when i happened to order a drink.
we made small talk, had a few chuckles and by evening's end she and her pal and i exchanged phone numbers.
we actually got together about 4 or 5 times.
then we lost track of each other.
now i know why.
she had some serious "stuff" to do.
doubt she would even remember "our time together".
but i sure do.

keep off the grass ( and the driveway)

one of the minor annoyances of being a mailcarrier is the "DO NOT CROSS LAWN" order.
certain lawn obsessed customers contact the post office and set up a special request for the carrier not to walk across their lawn. you would think that the customers that request this service would have a picture- perfect-manicured-to-the-max type of lawn.
you expect to get out there and see some fastidious landscaping out of the pages of Better Homes and Gardens, but sadly this usually isn't the case.
mostly it's just your garden variety complainer finding yet another venue in which to dump their generalised control issues.
ms. ribble has such an order.
her yard is 90% burned out grass and 10% neglected garden.
every day i square off her yard and walk from the street up her driveway.
every day i hope to see some improvement in her yard that will make her DO NOT CROSS order legitimate.
it hasn't happened yet.
she is good at giving landscaping advice though.
one of her neighbors told me that she yelled across the street at his wife for taking down a tree. she was screaming that the tree was irreplaceable and now the value of the neighboring property was going to go down as a result.
the odd thing is that the neighbor she was bitching at has THE best landscaping on the street.
ms. ribble's other next door neighbor does have something new in their lawn.
a FOR SALE sign.
jees..i wonder why?