Days of Yore Mom

Monday, February 9, 2004 » update

Shamelessly stolen from Alan:

I remember those lazy days of summer when I would sit by the window and appreciate the mailman. Think about that job. Everyday you deliver the mail to unappreciative people who expect you to always be there and are angry at you for any flaws in the delivery process, no matter how unrelated to you the problem really is. You have to wade through snow and wind and rain and dogs and pissy cats and sometimes bees and wasps of all sorts and all other forms of obstacles on your way to hundreds of front doors or driveway ends. It is a hard job. It is a government job. It is your job. You are their carrier, their deliverer, their connection to the far corners of the world, at least you were until the advent of the internet. You've been replaced in some functions, by a box that does no physical labor to do the same job. The only reason you still exist is for the technologically inept and to give people these job stealing boxes which they ordered through their old box. You bring the bills for people to grumble at. You bring the jury summons. You bring the kilos of drugs unknowingly to the children. You are a dying breed of intrepid wanderer. You give people object they want, but you have to compete now with your FedExs and your UPSs and your Jet Blues who make it so easy and cheap to fly across the world to give packages full of love and hope directly to their loved ones and business partners, cutting out the middle man which is you. You have no place. We have lost the need for your traveling to our doorstep to give us things. You now have nothing to do but sit behind a desk and hand out stamps. You could go out and deliver those incoming "Dear Grandma" letters, but you know, deep inside, that Grandma is dead and poor little Jessica or Tommy or Sarah or Micheal or Zoe or Patrick will find this out the moment you deliver their letter back to them stamped return to sender. It eats at you. It eats at you until you feel helpless, trapped, disenfranchised, and totally, utterly, and completely lost. How can a postman do his or her job of finding houses and addresses when he or she is lost? Neither he nor she can. It is over. The dream of happy people with letters full of love passing from one hand into the correct hand, your hand into their smaller, more delicate palm already packed with promise and opportunity is over. The world is now a black and angry place full of hatred directed at you. you must stop the hate before it is too late, but you cannot. There is no time and nothing to implement any helpful action. Your only hope is to open those packages of promise and joy and hope for an idea, a plan, a way to stop the insanity and the pain and the torment for ever and always in everyone everywhere. Tear open those boxes. It is your only hope.

This is why you do not send guns through the mail.