Exit Only
“Because once you depart from this one-way road of life, there is just no getting back on.”
Hide-a-Key
I love my post office, not just because it’s so neat and compact, so Neo-classically civic in that built-in-the-1930s way, but because it’s such a beehive of activity. Outside this place it I have had my fender bumped, been bitten by a swan and seen an elegantly dressed lady pull back her head like a snake and spit! into the bushes. Once I even got propositioned there by a man 20 years my junior. (It happens, ask any woman who smiles a lot. It says nothing about us and everything about Testosterone and the bald truth that Nookie-Hope Springs Eternal in the breasts of those roiling with it.)
I live in the Aleutian Islands, of course. I say that so you won't try going to Post Office and wrecking things for the cheery 50-something man I’m going to tell you about now: He was bounding up the steps just as I was bounding down when I ran into a woman I know who stopped me mid-bound on the third step. As I stood talking with her and facing back up the steps in the direction of the Post office’s broad façade, I saw this man suddenly shoot straight up in the air, sweep his hand long the lintel over one of the windows and land with a look of immense satisfaction on his face.
“What did you just do?” I asked him.
“I keep my the key to my Post Office Box up there. This way I never have to worry about forgetting it!”
Now how adorable is that ? Just when you’re thinking everyone is lost in cynicism and mistrust along comes a sweet Jack-in-the-Box of a guy like this. It's what I love about life on this earth.
And now if you'll promise to respect his privacy and not swipe his key and steal all his mail I’ll show you a picture of my Post Office, which I harvested just now by Image-Googling the name of my town in the Aleutians and the word “Neo-classical.”
And Whoops! what do you think came up as well? A Neo-classical picture of ME in the tub after a long day’s writing, where hey I mean you can totally SEE why the young guy hit on me, eh? A babe all right, even WITHOUT my Wonder Bra on!
WTF?
So here’s a new low: the Postal Service swore at me.
Hard to believe, I know, but I have it right here: a naughty abbreviation thickly scrawled on the envelope of my nice neatly-lettered envelope, which was only addressed a LITTLE wrong in the sense that I had a city that didn’t go with its state, and a zip code that didn’t go with either one.
Somebody there at that Mississippi post office not only wrote, “No Such Address” – or I should say checked the “No Such Address” box on the inky, stamped-on grid that lists all the possible reasons why your letter is coming back to Sorry Old You - but then scribbled the naughty phrase on there too.
“WTF?!” it said right there in black and white.
Now not so long ago I wouldn’t have understood the meaning of this tidy little acronym, for I am old and limited in my understanding generally. I only know it now because I have so many young people in my life, most of whom can hang out a whole clothesline’s worth of vividly bad language once they get going.
For others like me out there I will explain that the phrase means basically “What in tarnation?” (I told you I was old) or, more exactly, “What the HECK?” only with a certain other word in place of “heck,” the whole phrase perhaps being another one dreamed up by enlisted men, along the lines of “FUBAR” which we’re all now familiar with, having seen “Saving Private Ryan” back in the late 1990’s.
I felt hurt a little hurt, I’ll admit. I mean, I make mistakes all the time and no one else in my life finds it necessary to talk in to me in curse words and the Post Office most especially. The Post Office is really nice to me.
Last year I had a whole envelope stuffed with a whole month’s worth of paychecks sent me by the papers that subscribe to my weekly column, which instead of bringing to the bank I accidentally mailed. Mailed in an unsealed envelope, with no address on it of course and no stamps. (I was hand-carrying it to the bank so why would it have an address and stamps?) Luckily, I had used one of my business envelopes with my name and return address printed right on it.
So even though I dropped it in the mailbox instead of bringing it to the bank back it came to me, the very next day: I found it in my post office box with not a single check missing and more to the point no saucy talk scribbled on the envelope.
They look out for me there at my P.O. and I am very grateful for this fact. I get mail all the time with just my name and “Winchester MA” written on the envelope. Plus once some unsavory looking guy approached Sam at the window asking where Terry Marotta lived. “Why?” said Sam accusingly. “Because I want to mail her something.” “Give it to me and I’ll see that she gets it,” Sam said coldly and the guy turned right around and left. And once I walked in to the place and Sam said, “I don’t like the sound your brakes are making. Go right to the gas station and have them looked at,” and I did and they were on the brink of total meltdown.
So with that kind of loving-kindness directed at me you can totally SEE why I’m shocked to receive this piece of nasty commentary, right? I mean right? Talking like that to a nice older person like me? Heavens my word! as my most old-fashioned friend regularly exclaims. Land sakes! Or, in common parlance and stooping to this guy’s level, What the frickity frick?!