Possumblog

So very pitiful.

First of all, I allowed myself to be beaten at chess last night by Middle Girl. She'd been yammering about having a family game night, and I wanted to do SOMEthing that didn't involve yelling, so I made up my mind I'd beat up on little kids at the chessboard. I beat Cat, then took on Rebecca and had her soundly beaten until I lost my concentration and allowed one of her bishops to threaten me, and I didn't notice it until after I'd moved and THAT'S when I told her that she had me in check. So she took my king. Then she played and beat Catherine, and then I played Cat and won again. That game I lost, though, haunts me.

As does the fact that I ONCE AGAIN left my soup at home again today that I was going to have for lunch.

As does the fact that I had intended to put a stamp on the credit card bill before I left the house, but didn't.

As does the fact that I drove straight to the main post office downtown and blithely stuck the letter in the box, only remembering its stamplessness in the split-second after I'd dropped it in the slot and started to pull forward.

GAHHHHH!!!

I AM A MORON!!

Pulled around back into the parking lot--maybe they can open the box and let me put a stamp on it!

Walked briskly into the lobby and to the counter, which was staffed by two very thorough, very relaxed, very unconcerned postal employees. Slowly, methodically they worked with each customer. Of which there were six. Not counting me. And then the lady left and went somewhere.

And then the man left to go look for some mail the mentally distant disheveled talking-to-herself woman had asked about. Approximately ten minutes later, it was finally my turn. I explained I'd dropped my envelope in the box without a stamp and could anyone PLEASE open the box and let me retrieve it and put a stamp on it?

"Hmm. I'll have to ask the manager."

Five more minutes elapse. He comes back and says someone will come help me.

7:30.

Phone rings--it's Reba, who'd found my lunch in the refrigerator and offered to drop it off to me on her way to work. Yay. Told her where I was, but that I was sure I'd be to work by the time she got there.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Ten minutes pass. The counter line grows, then shrinks in several cycles as people decide it's quicker and easier to mail their packages with UPS. Or duct taped to a wooly mammoth.

"Did no one ever come get your letter?"

YES, but I just enjoy cooling my jets watching people shuffle through here like they're on the way to being dipped in acid!

Thank goodness the ol' internal monologue has yet to figure a way out of my head.

"Uhh, well, no--no one that I've seen."

"Hmm, well they said he'd be here. He must not have come."

Brilliant deduction, Watson!

"I'll ask the manager again."

At that moment she walked by and he asked what happened to the box opening guy. "He didn't come out?"

No.

They conferred and a new request was to be made.

FINALLY a nice guy came out and apologized for not getting there quicker, and I apologized for being stupid and not putting a stamp on my mail. We walked out and he opened the box and rolled out the cart, and thankfully it wasn't that full. I figured my bill should be probably in the top two inches.

I described the envelope--envelopey, white, with no stamp. And small. Ish.

He good-naturedly bent over the cart and began shuffling through several hundred envelopes, looking for what was basically a needle in a needlestack. Amazing how many envelopes look exactly alike. People do seem to like their Netflix. Invitation. Bills. Big scrawly handwritten addresses. He searched, and searched and THERE IT IS--no, wait, not it--while I looked on and repeatedly told him I was sorry to make him do all this. "No problem--people do it all the time, and I probably have to come out here twelve times a day to help them find it."

Somehow, I was not comforted.

He reached the bottom.

No envelope. "Do you think maybe you DID put a stamp on it and just thought you didn't?"

Well, by the time he got down to the canvas bottom, I was beginning to harbor that very thought--what if I'd proactively put a stamp on it the other day, and just didn't remember stamping it and only THOUGHT I still had to put a stamp on it and--NO. No. I know I didn't stamp it.

Back again through the stack of mail the other way. Flip, flip--stop to take some letters from people as they'd pull up to the box--flip, flip, flip--THAT'S IT--no, flip, flip.

Around about 8:00, we finally found it. Near the beginnig of the stack, it had gotten overlooked during the first sort. Proudly put on my 41 cent stamp, told the man I was eternally grateful, and shook his hand.

Got to work just in time for Reba to drop my lunch off.

And now I'm wondering how in the world I'm going to continue to be able to function with so very few operating brain cells.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at May 30, 2007 08:59 AM