POSTAL RULES
Rule #1. Just because mail ends up at your house doesn’t mean you get to keep it.
My sister and I ordered some diet cookies – actually, lots of them! We decided to have them delivered to her house, she’d divide up the different flavors and I’d pick up my share from her. I called in the order. After giving her name as the recipient, I accidentally gave the wrong address – which we were unaware of until the night of the scheduled delivery. Already in her jammies, my sister sent my brother-in-law out to look for our cookies. He returned to tell her that the house number I had given didn’t exist. But he reported that he’d seen a huge box on the porch of a neighbor at the other end of the block.
Maybe the delivery person got tired of searching for an address conjured up by a diet crazed woman and left the package at the first door he came to?
My sister sent her husband out once again, this time with instructions to check out the box and see if her name was on it. When he came back, he reported that the box had been removed, and even though he saw a light on in the house and he could hear noises inside, no one would respond to his loud banging on the doors.
Upon this news, my sister immediately sat down and wrote a letter to the neighbor. She explained that although her sister (namely me) had gotten my sister’s name on the package, her sister (namely me again), had for some unknown reason given a fictitious house address. But, she wrote, the box was meant for her, and if the neighbor would check the label they would see that this was so. After numerous paragraphs of detailed explanations, my sister signed the two page document and convinced my brother-in-law to take it, and some tape, and stick it on the neighbor’s door. Then afraid that the bizarre actions of the neighbor might suggest that our cookies were being held for ransom, my sister called me to see what the cookies were worth.
“They’re going to make me loose weight; they’re priceless!” I bellowed.
This time when my brother-in-law returned home he reported that the house was now completely dark, but the package was back on the porch and sure enough my sister’s name was on it. He had carried the big box home and that’s when they saw that it had been opened. Did the neighbor just rip open the strange package without even looking at the label? Or had the neighbor also ordered thirty pounds of diet cookies? I’m afraid I think it’s because the neighbor didn’t like any of the flavors we’d chosen. But maybe I’m just jaded…which isn’t surprising after coming into contact with several Postal Rule Breakers – not that all of the encounters were bad, of course, nor was everyone a Rule Breaker. The people way up the street have good postal manners. When a huge, heavy package meant for us was delivered to them they loaded it in their car and drove it down here. Unfortunately not everyone is as sharp as they are.
One day as I was out watering the lawn a neighbor approached me.
“Your gas bill is higher than mine,” she gloated.
“Huh?”
“It came to my house,” she explained, as she handed me the open envelope.
And you’re reading my mail because you have a secret desire to pay my bills?
I would have reminded her that she was breaking the law by tampering with the United States mail, but I know it would have been pointless, since the confrontation over her last invasion obviously had no impact on her – that was the time she opened an unexpected, $400.00 check meant for us (but delivered to her) and left it languishing at her house - for two years!
FACT OR FIB – you be the judge. I’ll give you a hint: it’s fact.