a big brown box

Okay, so here's how the story began . . .

When I was home visiting my parents for my brother's wedding, I was driving my mom's car a lot. When I flew home, I still had Mom's car key in my pocket (realized it just after I went through airport security, too, so it was too late to run it back to her.

<sigh>

Mom had one more key, so it wasn't a huge deal, but she still needed her key back. So I promised her that I would drop it in the mail as soon as I got home.

(That was my first mistake. "As soon as I got home?" Okay, that just wasn't ever going to happen. But I gave it the old college try. I really did. And "try" is the operative word. All of my recent leadership/personal development training has taught me that when I even think the word "try", nothing happens.

So I "tried" to mail Mom's key for several weeks.

I have this thing about post offices. Well, it's not really a thing. It's just that I hate them. I loathe post offices. They feel old and archaic and pointless and stupid and slow and dirty and . . . I just hate them. And there's one at the bottom of my street now.

So Mom's key just sat on my dresser.

After a couple weeks (and a couple more promises to Mom) I managed to get the key into a padded mailing envelope.

And after a few more weeks (like, about six) I managed to drop that stupid key into a mailbox.

Mission accomplished.

So when Mom and Dad checked out of their hotel after Christmas, then called us from the plane to let us know that they had left some things in their hotel room, and would we mind picking them up, putting them in a box, and shipping them home . . . well, I just sighed.

But I was determined this time.

So I took a box that someone had used to ship us Christmas gifts, threw all the stuff in there, taped it shut, wrote the address on it, and schlepped it down to the freakin' post office the next day.

No joke.

The next day.

And I triumphantly called Mom to let her know that I had mailed the box, paid a little extra for priority mail, and that it should arrive by the weekend.

But the post office gods had other ideas.

Came home Tuesday night to find THE BOX on our front porch. Yeah. It was back. Like a recurring ear infection. Like a childhood nightmare. Like . . . . I don't know what it was like, BUT THE GODDAMN BOX WAS ON MY FRONT PORCH!!!!!

Get this. I never removed the label that had been used by Corey's brother to ship us Christmas gifts. It was a ratty, old label taped to the bottom of the box. Half of the address was torn off, even. Ya really gotta hand it to those post office guys -- terrific detective work, fellas. And nobody bothered to check the TOP of the box or the postmark to figure out where the package was actually supposed to go.

So the bloody thing has been sitting in the apartment all week.

<sigh>

Sorry, Mom. Tomorrow's Saturday, and I WILL have it in the mail to you!!!!

Here endeth the lesson.

Posted: Fri - January 7, 2005 at 10:52 PM

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a big brown box

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