I Know Where Hell Is
It is inside the doors of the United States Post Office. Any one of them. Anywhere.
That must be why I put off trips to the post office over just about any other chore in my life. I beg people on the street for stamps when I run out of them. Or, I buy them in bulk at Costco.
I finally returned a dress I didn’t like after having it for almost a month. It was boxed up and ready to return, postage already paid, staring at me every time I walked into or out of the house. Looking at the detritus of a bad purchasing decision was more attractive to me than taking the freaking box to the post office and dropping it in the package bin.
I could just manage a trip to Hell, I mean the post office, when they had the automated machine in the lobby. I could almost see it smiling at me as it dispensed books of stamps. With a touch of my fingertips, it weighed packages, spewing printed labels like a dream.
Well, occasionally it worked like a dream. Most of the time, it was out of order. But, when it worked, it made visiting the place closer to Heaven, an in-and-out fantasy session for little old me.
On my last visit, someone had kidnapped my beloved stamp-printing machine. With increasing desperation, I searched every nook and cranny of the public space, scaring a random man out of his wits in the process. I was bereft. I stood in line just to ask what happened to my friend. Blank stares greeted my description of bulky blue machinery with a touch screen that winked at me.
No one knew where it went. It was almost like the counter workers never, ever visit the lobby of the post office, like the lobby is a portal to another world. A scary universe where things work.
Sort of.
Too Much is Too Much: Trips to the Post Office
Disclaimer: One of my favorite readers, Steve Mitchell (aka heednotsteve) works for the United States Postal Service. I am glad my stamp-spitting machine went away if it makes his job easier.
