Sunday, January 13, 2008

Go Ahead and Mail It!

I just e-mailed a relative of mine who called me with a question yesterday. She's got a good idea, and if she wants to share it MAYBE we can urge her to post a comment on this post! The question involved mailing certain items, which reminded me of the following:

There are always weird things that people like to mail. What I personally hate are the damned coconuts people mail from Hawaii... they tend to roll around the truck, and are a real pain to hammer in through the mail-flap in the people's front door! (OK... we actually just hand them over to the people, or leave them on the porch by the mailbox.)

There was one occasion where some bo-bo mailed a BANANA -- and it actually arrived at the Boise Main Post Office while it was still yellow and UN-bruised! That's some kind of record... I would have expected something black and very mushy!

There was a disabled veteran's group that used to mail light bulbs out as a fund-raiser. There's nothing more entertaining than getting an accordioned package with glass shards spilling out of it! It would seem that during transport these lightweight boxes ended up underneath something that was not lightweight.

We've seen wooden postcards, Frisbees, basketballs wrapped in brown paper ("Gee, I wonder what
this is?"). We've delivered envelopes from exotic beaches (with a small part of the beach spilling out of the envelope, a.k.a. SAND). We've seen rocks, tires, bottles with letters inside them (clever advertisers?) and small packages with cell phones that are STILL charged and ring while we're driving on our mail routes -- there's nothing more unsettling than a package that starts making weird noises! And there's nothing more maddening than one of those musical greeting cards that has been damaged in handling and the thing keeps playing its little tune over, and over, and OVER!

The thing that used to bother me the most was a beekeeper on my first route that ordered honeybees through the mail. They would come in a little square, screen-meshed box and I was certain that at anytime they'd find a way out and come to visit me in a way I'd rather not think about. Queen bees were different; they came in little individual padded compartments and were well sealed and protected.

All in all, we're seen some entertaining items in the mail over the years... no doubt we'll see a few more interesting mailings before our working days are done!

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