These Young Whippersnappers Don't Know How To Post Office

It shouldn't be that hard for a Genius to mail a letter. Not even a letter! Just some winning scratcher tickets. It's not rocket science. Or maybe it should be, for him to understand.

Every week I send Genius a letter. I tuck two scratchers into the envelope. When he has a winner, he saves them until enough accumulate that he decides he wants to cash them in. He can't exactly take a Missouri lottery ticket into a Pennsylvania convenience store to cash it. So he sends them back to me, and I send him a check. Which he promptly takes a picture of and deposits it somehow through thin air, into his bank account that does not have a brick and mortar building.

Anyhoo... Genius phoned me shortly after Christmas, to say that he is NOT hurting for immediate money, but that he was going to mail back the tickets, and I could reimburse him after I got them.

"Okay. Are there a lot of them? Make sure you put on enough postage. I can get two sheets of paper, and two scratchers, in the envelope before it is overweight."

"WHAT? What do you mean by that? If I have to mail something, I just put it in an envelope and slap on a stamp."

"Uh... hasn't anything ever come back to you with POSTAGE DUE stamped on the envelope?"

"No."

"One year, my TAX RETURN came back! I guess I had too many forms in it that year. Boy, was I ever shocked to step out on the porch of my $17,000 house, and find my own handwriting on the envelope addressed to the Internal Revenue Service! Good thing I didn't wait to mail it on April 15!"

"So you have to add another stamp? What do you do, go around WEIGHING your mail???"

"I used to take it into the main post office, before all this mask crap and only two people allowed in the lobby at once. I'd take it to the counter, say I thought it felt heavy, and they'd weigh it. I think it would cost an extra 17 cents, which I'd pay, and they'd rubber-stamp it, or put a generic post office stamp thingy on it next to mine. Lately, I just put on two stamps if I know for sure it's too heavy. If I have more than two pieces of paper, and two scratchers inside."

"I was just going to put all mine in an envelope and mail them. With a stamp. But there are too many to fit in one envelope."

"You could put in four, probably, for one stamp. And mail me one envelope each week."

"WHAT? Why would I do THAT? I don't want to look like some crazy stalker, sending an envelope every week!"

"Uh... that's what I do, send you a letter every week..."

"Well. I just take my stuff down to the mail room of my apartment building, and give it to them to send out. I don't want to look like a weirdo! So I guess I'll split up the tickets so they fit, and then put two stamps on each envelope. It's not like I have a shortage of stamps! I still have all those Madonna and Child stamps, that I hope didn't offend my Muslim co-worker when I sent out some stickers to everybody on my work team!"

Let the record show that Genius and his roommate both work from home, on different techy kinds of jobs for different companies. So it's no hardship for one to run out during business hours to buy stamps. But Genius likes to delegate responsibilities, and sent Friend on the stamp errand. Seems like the post office was all out of stamps, except for the Madonna and Child version. I think they have a LOT of them.

Tuesday, I got FOUR envelopes from Genius.

 

I think I'll let him know that the mailman must think I have a crazy stalker. And that I'm pretty sure my office will be safe from evil activity for a while, as I store these envelopes to cash in the scratcher winners as needed.