Mailmom goes to pre-school

In the fall of 2001, my son Jonah was just starting pre-school.
It was a tiny classroom, about the size of a large living room.
There were five other children in his class.
The teacher's name was Muzzie .
Muzzie was, and still is, the kindest, most gentle teacher on the planet.
She asked me to come in and talk to the kids about being a mail carrier.
I was more than happy to do so and began preparing for the gig.

When the big day came, I started off by reading them a story called My Mother the Mail Carrier.
They seemed to like that well enough, but I could tell they were beginning to get a bit restless.
I realized that I better get them physically involved
or I would probably lose their interest. After all,they were four year-olds and could only sit still for so long.

I put my mailbag on my shoulder and started telling them about how to prevent dog bites.
Many of the children had dogs of their own and seemed to be enjoying the topic.
I had brought along a hand puppet of a nasty looking Doberman with it's teeth poised in the ready-to-chop-on-some one's-leg position.
They took turns trying to attack me with the puppet. I showed them different techniques for fending off old Fido ...(feeding him the bag, feeding him the mail etc.). Things were going pretty well. I had every one's rapt attention.
It was time for the grand finale!
"Sit down kids. Now I'm going to show you how to stop a dog from attacking if nothing else works!"
"This stuff is called pepper spray. If used properly, it will stop a dog right in its tracks. One time I had to spray an aggressive dog and when I got done, he looked like he had stuck his face in a bag of Cheetos!"
They loved that story!
I was on a roll!
I had a big sheet of paper on an easel.
I stood back several paces and sprayed my dog spray onto the paper so they could see the "pretty orange Cheetos color" for themselves.
What I didn't plan on was the fumes kicking off the sheet of paper and seriously starting to irritate the eyes and nasal passages of six little four year-olds, their teacher, my husband and several other parents that witnessed this unfortunate miscalculation.
The kids started coughing and tearing up.
They started waving their seat cushions in the air.
The teacher ran to the door, opening and closing it, in a desperate attempt to circulate some fresh air into the classroom.
I stood at the head of the class frozen in horror.
As long as I live, my family will never let me forget the day I "went postal" on a bunch of unsuspecting pre-schoolers.

Black friday..postal version

wake up after eating too much and staying up too late
it's 6:00 am and it's still black outside.

take a shower
get dressed
put on black long johns because it's gonna be freezing out there.

hit the clock at 7:00 am.
hard to find my case because it's buried under so much mail.
ask myself (as always)..is it worth it to have the day off and come back to this mess?
as always, the answer is ..yes!

hit the street.
jump out for my first stop...
almost literally hit the street..
black ice.
drop a few choice swear words.
tell myself to slow down.
ask myself why did i ever decide to be a mail carrier anyhow?

calm down.
regroup.
think about all of the crazy people in line to buy
some deeply discounted electronic crap.
think they are nuttier for doing that than i am for doing this.
is it still black friday if all of those goofballs in line are
seriously in the red at the end of the day?

a customer comes to the door and asks me if
i can hold on a second.
sure i can...
he's been gone so long
that i think..
he must be filling out a card for me with a tip inside.
i'm thinking not black or red..but green.

he comes back and hands me a bill to mail for him.
tip blackout!

work 9 hours.
get in my car to drive home.
sky is already dark. black.

home.
eat something.
not left overs.
hit the futon.
black out.

turkey day

here is what i am postally grateful for:

1) right now it is freezing and sleety outside
and i am not out there schlepping mail around

2) yesterday's mandated two hour pivot was not the nightmare scenario
that i had imagined it would be

3) tomorrow i will get paid to walk off some of the 4,000 calories that i will
undoubtedly consume at my brother's turkey day meal

happy holidays to you my postal compatriots!

i hate to be the one to break it to you buddy, but life ain't fair

It was a heavy mail day.
I had catalogs up the wazoo.
I was beat.
The sun was going down.
I just wanted to get home.
I was on the very last street on my route.

Looking around the bend, four houses up, I could just about make out the shadowy figure of a guy waiting next to his mailbox.
Even though I couldn't see him clearly, I knew by his posture, that he wasn't just waiting to get his mail.
He had a bone to pick.
After 20 years of playing this game, I was pretty sure he was going to ask me why I was "late".
Well, I was half right.
He definitely had a bone to pick..but it wasn't just that I was LATE,
but rather he was upset because he always gets his mail last everyday.
I did my best to explain that the route is laid out a certain way for reasons of efficiency, and to make him FIRST as he suggested, would mean reprogramming complex computer data bases, retraining clerks, changing our cases around..blah,blah, blah..
"When I want to change the order of things in my computer I JUST HIT REVERSE!", he explained to me.

I felt like just hitting reverse myself and driving away from the whole conversation.
I sat there , not knowing what to tell the guy.
"Get a life"..(or failing that, get a P.O. box) was the first thing that came to mind.
"What can I tell you? I hear what you're saying ..but the P.O. is a monolith. We don't do change well. The best you can hope for is that the next time they adjust the routes, your street comes out in an earlier position. Until then, all I can say is , if you want your mail around 10:00am, you're going to have to move to Fairview Dr., because they are on the beginning of my route. Unfortunately, there's nothing for sale on that street right now. ..but if something comes up, I'll give you a holler!".

How I start every postal day

oatmeal is as central to my postal existence as mail.
can't get the wheels turning without it.
there are two oatmeal related problems though.
1) eating it gives you the false sense that is OK to then eat all of the other crap that people bring in on their overtime day (i.e. donuts, cookies,pastry...) because the oats cancel all of that stuff out.
2) if you don't finish your delightfully steaming, brown sugar filled bowl within two minutes, it magically morphs into wallpaper paste right before your eyes.then you're faced with the question of "will i eat wallpaper paste..cuz it's good for me..or will i be wasteful and toss it out?"
just another of little postal conundrum.

side note: the blue latex gloves are a fashion must for mail gals this fall.
come on girls, let's rock that uni!!

the real reason that dogs want to bite us

making dog biscuits in the shape of mail carriers is just plain wrong.

postal plaything

my mail pal peter gave me this dog toy for christmas last year.
i think every carrier should have one. It's called a "postal plaything".
there are many uses.
today i was bored so i brought it out on the route with me and talked to it while i did my mounted section.
you can hang it from your belt and feed it to a dog if it tries to bite you.
you can use it as a vodoo doll if one of your co-workers is making your life miserable.
it looks great hanging up at work, especially since we have been told to remove all personal items from our cases.
makes a great gift for the dog and/or postal pal on your holiday list.
hopefully it's not made in China!

Ripped Off

this morning i asked my fellow carriers "So, what's the official postal etiquette for dealing with the candy that the kids dropped last night..do we leave it or pick it up?" The universal answer was "Look both ways to make sure nobody is looking, then pick it up!"
I love being a mail carrier on Nov. 1st.
It's like getting paid to go on one big, long, easter egg hunt.
It's kind of like fishing too, because you really don't know what you're going to find out there. You could hit the mother lode or maybe you'll just get a nibble.
so off i went with visions of fun size Snickers bars filling my head.
i got shut out on the first street and started bumming.
then i told myself to relax and focus..and reassured myself that the candy would come.
second street..NOTHING.
admittedly, my vision ain't what it use to be, but when it comes to seeing an orphaned piece of candy laying in the grass, i'm like a god darn hawk!
finally, after an hour of agonising, i hit two pieces in one bundle..( OK ..one was Smarties..which doesn't really count because it's not chocolate..but at least i was making some headway!)
that put some spring back in my step. the hunt was on.
sadly, the rest of the route was a complete and total bust.
talk about dejection.
i felt like the dude that goes to the beach with his metal detector hoping to find a Rolex watch and comes home with two bottle caps and a nickle.
now i know how charlie brown felt in that scene from The Great Pumpkin when he went trick or treating and all he got was a rock.
there was one bit of silver lining to this dark cloud.
i did get a big smile on my face when i thought of all the adorable little children that innocently trampled across Ms. Ribble's lawn the night before.
so much for her "DO NOT CROSS LAWN" order!