we still check the mail
everyday and there are times
the mail is for us
They call it the sloooow country.
Everything seems to run at a different pace down here.
Even the mail.
You can tell we are old.
We walk to our mail box and check it every day.
But if we mail something to one of our kids, we have learned to give them a heads up to ‘check their mailbox’, because if we didn’t, they wouldn’t.
We often get mail.
I should say we often get mail in our mail box.
I remember the times when mail came everyday and there was a lot of it.
Even in college we got a lot of mail.
One of my roommates subscribed to Sports Illustrated.
We all looked forward to the day it got delivered though I have to say, with that time honored tradition, my roommate wanted to be the one who read it first.
When the magazine was nice and fresh and unread.
Something I could relate to and really understood.
Especially on those odd days I was home and got the mail and got to read it first.
We all knew that the edition of Sports Illustrated that came out AFTER the Super Bowl edition would be the famous swimsuit edition.
My roommate was determined to be the first one to read it that magazine so when he left for the day that day, he took the mailbox key with him.
I noticed the mail box key was missing from its hook that morning and as we all knew what day Sports Illustrated was delivered, I put it all together.
My first thought was that it had been well played and I silent applauded my roommate’s aforethought.
Then I accepted the challenge.
I would be the first one to read that magazine.
I knew that from the window in my room I could see up the street.
I got my books and parked on the window seat and after a bit I caught sight of our mail person working his way towards our apartment building.
Timing it just right I got down the steps with a another key in my fist and got to the mailbox at just as the mail person unlocked the boxes.
“Anything for 811?,” I asked, all innocence, just being helpful.
The guy looks at his cart, grabs a pile of envelopes and Sports Illustrated and handed it over without a question.
The look on my roommate’s face when he came in to see the magazine open on the coffee table was worth the price of tuition that semester.
With the magic of the low country, sometimes that mail in our mail box is for us.
More often than not, if there is more than one piece of mail in the mailbox, one of those pieces of mail will be for someone else in the complex, the neighborhood or at least, the same state.
I once ordered something from Amazon and got a text message that it had been delivered.
The email I got said, ‘Package left in mail box.’
There was no package in our mail box and I knew what happened.
Someone else got my package.
I wanted to post a note at the mailbox box that said, WHO EVER GOT MY MAIL, PLEASE GIVE IT BACK and sign it with my name and address.
I have to say that in an age when you can count on everyone owning a gun, my desire to leave such a note, with my name and address on it, takes more courage than I got right now.
I just got mad.
But it turned out that someone didn’t take my package.
They just put it back in the outbox.
It did arrive.
And it only took three months.
We still check the mail everyday.
And there are times, the mail is for us.
No Haiku For You 