Monday, July 11, 2016

More Mail Tomfoolery and Shenanigans

I'm starting to think the summer help at the dead-mouse-smelling post office has been listening to Genius. Not the Genius of now, who is safely separated from me, two hours away in College Town, becoming a heck of an engineer. No. I mean the Genius of pre-college days. That rapscallion who called me a short-temper cook, and dared command me to make him sandwiches while he lolled on the couch, perusing his phone, his sandwich-capable arms and legs atrophying while I stewed like primordial soup in a primitive crock pot.

I'm sure the dead-mouse-smelling post office commander in chief would not admit to having summer help. But I can't be fooled. You notice there's no such word as Valfoolery. That's why. I know there are different drivers for my rural route. Do I not venture to town each day for a 44 oz Diet Coke? I pass various vehicles stuffing mailboxes. Or turning around before they get to EmBee. Which would explain why some days, I get no mail at all.

Friday, our delivery driver was in an actual mail truck. The white Jeepy-looking kind that townie mailmen use. Not very common out here on two-lane blacktop. We usually have a Ford Ranger or a compact car with a magnetic sticker slapped on the tailgate or trunk, with the driver/mailman sitting on the wrong side. Which is pretty much illegal, according to The Pony. Of course, he didn't even get his driver's license until Christmas break, so perhaps he's not an authority. But he IS pretty smart in a book-learnin' kind of way, and if that's what he remembers from his study manual, I believe him.

Yeah, Friday's mail truck driver almost rammed into the side of T-Hoe coming out of a semi-circle drive at the top of the hill before our mailbox condo. Not a very observant fellow. But we DID get mail, and it was in good shape. Saturday, the mail was not there at 12:52 p.m. So I told The Pony to look for it when he came back from a trip to town to buy two plastic red cans of gas for Hick's tractor. The old green one. Not the newer blue one.

Here is one of the items he brought me.


Who IS our summer substitute rural carrier, anyway? Charlie Brown's friend Pigpen? How in tarnation can somebody get the mail dirty in between carrying it to their questionably-suited mail delivery vehicle parked on the concrete lot at the dead-mouse-smelling post office, driving it five miles out of town, parking on a blacktop road, and sliding it into the green-painted steel pipe that is EmBee?

Of course the piece of mail that was most damaged was the one that must double as the return envelope for my Sprint bill. I am not particularly impressed with my Sprint service, and no love is lost between me and their service technicians, but I am not like The Pony. I DO care what people think of me, even if the people are Sprint employees. I do NOT relish the thought of them receiving my soiled return envelope, and imagining that I used it to wipe my feces-encrusted anus. WAIT! Is that too graphic? Should I tone that down a little bit? Nah. You know what to expect here.

I see no end in sight to my mail delivery woes. If it ain't right, don't fix it. That's the motto of the USPS in this neck of the back roads.

In the same manner that Genius guaranteed me when I chastised him for taunting me without mercy, I'm sure the USPS, like Genius before them, WILL SHENAN AGAIN.

8 comments:

  1. Is that mud/dirt, or is it food? I can't tell from the photo.

    And how did you blur out your address? What kind of fancy tech stuff do you have up your sleeve? If you broadcast your address, you might have swarms of people at your house at 8 every morning, to take your tour. (Don't you charge a smaller fee for the early birds?)

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    1. That is MUD. Unless it's feces. But I DID have a People magazine show up a day late with cookie crumbs in the crease. Not here, though. At my second school town, where I walked through the drive-thru lane at the bank.

      Here's my top secret fancy tech blur-out method: I told The Pony to lay the opaque lid of a Great Value Cherry Limeade Sugar Free Drink Mix on top of the address. SWEET, huh, that sugar-free lid!

      People here at 8:00 would have to sit on the front porch pew and pet Juno and Jack until I rolled out of bed (usually by 9:00). NO DISCOUNTS!

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  2. I doubt you'll see any improvement anytime soon.

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    1. I have no doubts that you are correct, sir.

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  3. I have a friend who works at Sprint...you are all the buzz.

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    1. I think, perhaps, what you meant to say, was that I am THE SH!T.

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  4. You sure captured male shenanigans! Sorry about your phone. Our male mail man needs reading glasses. He can't seem to distinguish our address form our neighbor's. I read an entire AARP magazine wondering why they personalized the message: Hi Jesse. As I dropped crumbs all over Sally Field's face it dawned on me. Jesse was our new neighbor. Sure enough, right book, wrong address.

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  5. When I get the wrong mail, I take it to the mailbox when I go to town. I figure that mailman can just do his job all over again until he gets it right.

    I used to ask Hick to figure out which neighbor it belonged to, but that meant he had to drive around knocking on doors. It's not like we can just poke it in the mailbox beside ours. We have 10 or 12 on that row, and some are missing their address numbers because ne'er-do-wells bash the mailboxes. So the doors are either missing, or the box is replaced and not marked yet.

    Still, even a substitute mailman should know that numbers on the mail should match, no matter which box he shoves it in.

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