Monday, September 26, 2011

My Street Mailbox Worry

Do you know how we all have certain things we worry about, even though it makes no sense?

Well, I’m about to share one of my silly worries that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but here it is…..

Usually (98% of the time), I walk directly to the post office whenever mailing anything important, such as a bill, because I want to make sure it gets to wherever it needs to be going as fast, safe, and efficiently as possible.

And I do this for two reasons.

One, because some months I have to wait until right before the due date and I don’t want it to be late.

Yet, seeing how the mail system in this country has gradually turned into a hit or miss, there’s no telling WHEN or IF your mail will ever get to where it needs to go in a reasonable amount of time.

But don’t you think it’s ironic how you always get your BILLS delivered to YOU on time?

And my second (and most important) reason for doing this is that I’ve always had a ‘worry thing’ about using a street mailbox, because I mean come on…it’s right in the city street where any HEATHEN could easily reach inside by using a string and a piece of bubble gum to extract my bill from the box, and then throw it into a trash can so that it never gets to Chase Manhattan Bank. Whereupon, I’m charged a late fee. Just to be mean.

I also worry that whenever I place a bill into a street mailbox it’s going to somehow get stuck midway going down the mail slot, never making it completely inside the box. So, I keep opening the door and peering inside; BANGING the mail slot several times, just to be sure it gets DOWN in there.

People on the street must think I’m one of those crazy and colorful homeless characters with tourette syndrome, who enjoys being abusive to mailboxes.

Open…BANG…“Fuck!” Open…BANG…“Fuck!” Open… BANG…“Fuck!”

Another one of my concerns is that when the mail person comes to collect the contents in the mailbox, he or she will accidentally drop my bill on the ground and then someone will pick it up and find a way to CASH my check without any identification, and then use that money to pay one of THEIR bills.

One of my other worries is that what if the mail person is suddenly MUGGED by a lunatic while collecting the mail, and then the lunatic uses my bill money to buy a couple grams of CRACK?

The other 2% of the time, I WILL use a street mailbox to mail things, such as, greeting cards or letters, but even then I think about the above mentioned and WORRY.

See! Didn’t I tell you that my worries make absolutely no sense whatsoever?

I'm insane.

But, I think if I lived in a place like Little House On The Prairie, I wouldn’t be as worried about using a street mailbox, because the people on Little House On The Prairie don’t even know what crime is.

However, I live in Philadelphia, where crime is a fine art….