The $48,000 Envelope

Last Wednesday, I rushed to the dead-mouse-smelling post office after school to mail The $48,000 Envelope.

No. It wasn't an entry for the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes. It was an application for a Chancellor's Scholarship to Missouri S&T. The student has to meet specific academic criteria to qualify. Fifteen of these scholarships are awarded to incoming freshmen. That's twelve thousand dollars a year, renewable, as long as a 3.25 grade point average is maintained.

The deadline was a postmark of November 1. Genius had been toying with the idea of applying for quite a while. Upon receiving his last ACT score of 35 (out of a possible 36), he checked into it again, and saw the rapidly-approaching cut-off date. He rounded up his references, wrote a required editorial response on the subject of gas price control, and requested an official transcript to be mailed by the counselor. The office brought me the packet in a manilla envelope, ready for posting.

Perhaps you remember some of my previous dealings with the dead-mouse-smelling post office. How I did not feel that they handled some of my writing contest submissions with the proper amount of reverence. Things have not changed.

I pushed The $48,000 Envelope across the counter to the postal clerk. He tossed it onto a scale. Without even wiping it down with alcohol! There could have been cocaine crumbs on there. Or fecal matter.

"Will that have today's postmark? October 31st?"

"That's what this sticker will say. October 31st."

"It's my son's scholarship application."

Postal Quirk did not even dignify that with a response. Like mothers brought him scholarship applications that could decide the future of their first-born sons all day, every day. He printed the sticker and stuck it on. Without even measuring the distance from the top and side of the envelope! Just slapped it on there, all willy-nilly, not caring whether or not it was geometrically correct! We're talkin' about a scholarship application to Missouri S&T here. Not a portfolio to the Picasso Institute of Matchbook Cover Art! An engineering school. Where precision is a virtue.

Furthermore, Postal Quirk tossed that envelope sideways into a gray plastic tub. Rather than carrying it on a red velvet pillow to the back of the mail truck and securing it with a special Velcro seatbelt made just for scholarship applications to Missouri S&T.

Genius did not grasp the gravity of this situation. He thinks of S&T as his fall-back choice. His safety school. I look at it as MY number one choice. Genius has already officially applied, and has an offer of a scholarship packet that amounts to almost 71 percent of this very special scholarship. But still...

Momma needs to have adequate 44 oz. Diet Coke money in her golden years.